Political and Current Affairs - ItalyndiaPolitical and Current Affairs The nuclear park at Jaitapur...

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Rassegna della stampa internazionale sull’India

- 30 Agosto - 20 Settembre 2010 -

A cura di Giulio Carminati

[email protected]

Summary

Political and Current Affairs

The nuclear park at Jaitapur will be huge. pag 6

So will the human cost

BY NIKHIL GHANEKAR September 18, 2010 Tehelka

Kashmir's new Islamist movement pag 9

Leaders of the protests see street violence as a crucible in which a new generation of jihadists is

being forged.

Praveen Swami Sep 17, 2010 The Hindu

JAMMU & KASHMIR

Key players pag 12

SHUJAAT BUKHARI in Srinagar Sep. 11-24, 2010 The Hindu

. JAMMU & KASHMIR

First steps pag 14

The situation in Kashmir calls for immediate steps to create conditions conducive to a two-pronged

dialogue process. A.G. NOORANI Sep. 11-24, 2010 The Hindu

Bollywood realism pag 20 When it comes to organised crime, the line between underground and overground is thin

. Between power politics and box office cinema, and audience consensus, this is the sleazy synthesis

Karen Gabriel

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17 Sep 2010 | Hardnews

Nepal, China and India

Rivals on the roof of the world pag 23

Great-power rivalry grows in the Himalayas

Sep 16th 2010 | KATHMANDU From The Economist Print Edition Pakistan

After the deluge pag 25

The waters are receding, but the damage done to Pakistan will take years—and better

government—to undo

Sep 16th 2010 | Charsadda, Islamabad and Rajanpur From The Economist Print Edition Statistics: private players

The Keys To The State pag 29

Where do you go to find relevant government data? Private players throw the door open. Pragya Singh 13 Sep 2010, 2010 OUTLOOKINDIA

Asia

Midlevel Universities Look Into India Branches pag 33

By VIR SINGH September 12, 2010 The New York Times

Space crunch Rapid business growth

Room In The Sky pag 35

Defence airspace to be freed for dual use

Amba Batra Bakshi Sep 12, 2010 OUTLOOKINDIA

COVER STORY

Poisoned ground pag 36

Hindustan Unilever is avoiding its responsibilities to its workers exposed to mercury in the

thermometer factory it owned in Kodaikanal.

SARAH HIDDLESTON Sep. 11-24, 2010 FRONTLINE

Business Class Rises in Ashes of Caste System pag 51 By LYDIA POLGREEN

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September 10, 2010 The New York Times

View From SAN FRANCISCO

Reverse Migration Dot Com pag 53 India’s Silicon Valley diaspora is proving a key resource, recycling to India much of the energy, creativity

and experience that made the Valley a global technology icon.

Sean Randolph Sep 8 2010 OUTLOOKINDIA Opinion

The Wrongs About The Right To Food pag 56 How does the government hope to choose between the destitute, the poor, and the barely surviving; or if you

like, the starving, the chronically hungry, the malnourished, the anaemic and the food insecure? Ananya Mukherjee Reed Sep 08, 2010 OULOOK INDIA Energy in the developing world

Power to the people pag 60 Technology and development: A growing number of initiatives are promoting bottom-up ways to deliver

energy to the world’s poor

Sep 2nd 2010 From The Economist Print Edition

Mobile internet in emerging markets

The next billion geeks pag 63 How the mobile internet will transform the BRICI countries

Sep 2nd 2010 | DADRI, UTTAR PRADESH From The Economist Print Edition

Nalanda university

Ivory pagodas pag 64 An ancient pan-Asian university might yet open again

Sep 2nd 2010 From The Economist Print Edition

Opinion

A return to the lunar surface pag 64 China and India are ready with their plans, this time with automated spacecraft. N. Gopal Raj Friday, Sep 17, 2010 The Hindu

Pune shifts to top gear as automobile hub pag 66 The global financial meltdown only underscores the importance of cost control and cost effectiveness for

auto manufacturers

RAMNATH SUBBU

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Sep 17, 2010 The Hindu

Opinion

China-Africa: Evaluating a growing partnership pag 69 It covers all facets, helping China to project itself as a global power Rajiv Bhatia Septemberr 17, 2010 The Hindu

Economic News

TAPMI sets up R&D unit in 'Blue Ocean Strategy' pag 72

September 20, 2010 Business Standard

Govt approves simplified labour law pag 73 September 17, 2010 Business Standard

Kerala Tourism to launch global campaign pag 74

September 16, 2010 The Hindu Business Line

Russia, India in pact to develop biotech network pag 75 September 15, 2010 The Hindu Business Line

India becomes the seventh largest vehicle producing country globally pag 75

September 14, 2010 IBEF

Suryachakra unit teams up with German co for solar projects pag 76 September 14, 2010 The Hindu Business Line

Taiwan keen to tap Indian electronics, auto parts sectors pag 76


HAL, Russian firms seal transport plane venture pag 77


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Passenger car sales grew by 33 per cent in August 2010: SIAM pag 78 September 10, 2010 IBEF

Growing coastal shipping accounts for 27% of traffic pag 79


Mobile subscriber base touched 652 million mark in July 2010 pag 79 September 09, 2010 IBEF

Siemens

A giant awakens pag 80

Europe’s biggest engineering firm used to be known for two things: making everything but a profit;

and scandal. Now things look very different

Sep 9th 2010 | From The Economist Print Edition

Siemens enters solar, wind power business in India pag 84


TCS No.2 insurance BPO service provider in UK pag 85

September 03, 2010 Business Standard:

Imperial Auto in joint venture with Italian co pag 86


Chennai port gets Rs 100 cr for new hub pag 87


Tax incentives for business to be investment-linked pag 87

September 01, 2010 Business Standard:

Economy grows 8.8 per cent in Q1 pag 88

September 01, 2010 IBEF

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Chinese, Italian companies set up ceramic service offices in Morbi pag 89 Aug 31, 2010 Business Standard

Indonesia keen on attracting more Indian investments pag 89 Aug 30, 2010 The Hindu Business Line

Seven payloads firmed up for Chandrayaan-2 pag 90

Aug 30, 2010 The Hindu Business Line

Society

Music

Brahms In Bengalooru pag 92

Western classical music has a fresh generation of students. They aren’t the usual suspects. Sugata Srinivasaraju Sep 15, 2010 OUTLOOKINDIA

Political and Current Affairs

The nuclear park at Jaitapur will be huge.

So will the human cost BY NIKHIL GHANEKAR

September 18, 2010 Tehelka THE PROPOSED site for the Jaitapur nuclear park is a sight for weary eyes with blankets of lush grass covering the plateau 25 metres above sea level. The N-park will house six reactors, the biggest one having a capacity of 1,650 MW, eclipsing the largest units at Japan’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant with a capacity of 1,315 MW. But on 2 August, the idyllic site became a battleground when a team of Nuclear Power Corporation India Ltd (NPCIL) officials and workers came to collect soil samples as part of the foundation planning exercise. A group of people from villages around the site pelted stones at the team. Retaliation from the State was swift and disproportionate: 55 demonstrators were charged with crimes like attempt to murder, vandalism and physical assault. The feeling of despair and helplessness that pervades the atmosphere is aptly summed up by an elderly person who conveys the mood thus, “Demons are taking birth here, demons!”

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TEHELKA travelled to Jaitapur and neighbouring villages in Ratnagiri district to listen to the voices of people who will be affected by this park, which will be the largest in the world, generating 9,900 MW. At that juncture, a platoon of around 50 policemen was positioned at the plot, readying itself for the arrival of Konkan zone Inspector General (Police) Param Veer Singh. The mood among the villagers had been tense for the past month. We asked Singh about the deployment of force, obstructing free movement of villagers and complaints of intimidation. The IG said, “This is a pre-emptive action. We are just following orders by promulgating Section 144 and 141 (relating to unlawful assembly). I don’t think anybody is being obstructed here.” Fishy deals Amjad Borkar (left) says it is impossible to predict the losses the fishing community will face The villagers have a different story to tell. Madban village, closest to the proposed site ( just half a kilometre away), brims with voices well aware of the perils of a nuclear power plant. There are apprehensions about the possibility of radioactive material spreading in the environment. Posters and flyers around temple walls and newsstands condemn what is termed ‘destructive progress’. The 938-hectare site was chosen by the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance in Maharashtra in 1995. The first notices informing the farmers their land was being acquired were sent in 2006; NPCIL acquired possession of the total area in January this year while the legal transfer of titles took place over the next three months. Yet, only a motley group of 20-30 people have collected compensation, a fact confirmed by project director CB Jain. According to him, the villagers want higher compensation and hence they are threatening others who have accepted the cheques. IN REALITY, there has been little effort to convince villagers that the plant is for the public good, leave alone explaining the computing of the compensation. Jain has a dismissive attitude to the local community, saying, “Let them oppose it, they will be in a minority later. Such projects of national interest do not stop for a few people.” As if realising that this is not politically correct, he adds: “But I respect the principles and ideas of the villagers.” Too little, too late. The ‘principles’ he is mentioning in this perfunctory manner are expressed emotionally by Vijay Raut, a 51-year-old farmer and Ganesh idolmaker. “Kill us all, makes us stand in a line along with our kids, but we will not back down,” he says. “And you will hear this voice from all the villages.” He is still smarting from being picked up from his home by the police. “Is this democracy or dictatorship?” he thunders. “My family has never taken loans from the government, never asked it for any help. We won’t give up our mother, our land, like a piece of cake. This land, our land, is so diverse, so ecologically rich.” There are many other potential pitfalls. The reactors and fuel will come from French energy giant Areva, following the Indo-French civilian nuclear deal signed on 1 October 2008, providing for reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from reactors in France under safeguards. Areva is being sued back home for contaminating French rivers. Moreover, regulatory bodies in Finland and UK have not approved Areva’s evolutionary European pressurised reactor (EPR), six of which are to be installed at Jaitapur. NPCIL’s Jain told TEHELKA the final deal with Areva for fuel has not been inked yet, and moreover that this aspect is not in his domain. What is in public domain, however, is that the comprehensive deal promises a lifetime supply of spent nuclear fuel for these reactors. This made

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France the first country from the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group to sign such a deal with India after global restrictions on nuclear trade with India were lifted. Also, Areva was allocated the chance to supply reactors. This sophisticated deal-making at the global level, however, has to now be translated into reality at the local level. A yawning gap is already apparent, with violence being used by villagers to make their voices heard. In the police atrocity that typically followed, the most shocking is perhaps that perpetrated on 18- year-old Sanket Bhatkar, who was picked up from his home when his father was away. He recalls, “I tried to explain that I was at college in Hativale when the stone-pelting took place: I showed them the punched bus ticket too. But they refused to believe me. For seven days, they kept me in jail for no reason and now they have charged me with attempt to murder.” Sanket’s first hearing was slated for 6 September and he had not engaged a lawyer. He had no idea about what would happen in court. If the villagers are worried about their land, Sakhri Nate village — which boasts of an annual fish catch of 10,000 tonnes, worth Rs.. 16 crore — is concerned about its livelihood. Amjad Borkar, vice-president of the forum Macchimar Kruti Samiti, says, “We posed a lot of questions in the public hearing that took place on 6 May this year about the restrictions on navigation and yield once the project starts (TEHELKA has a copy of the minutes of the meeting). But neither CB Jain nor Collector Madhukar Gaikwad could answer our questions.” The problem, according to Borkar, is, “The fishermen cannot anticipate today what losses they will face five-seven years from now, and the 5,500-strong population of Nate has all of 51 hectares and the sea at our disposal. The fish is exported to Japan, Europe and other countries. What will happen when the plant starts?” These concerns should, of course, be addressed in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), which is mandatory. But the draft report prepared by the National Environmental Engineering Institute (NEERI) is facing rough weather. The 1,600-page report has been questioned by environmentalists, activists and the Minister of Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh. It is being criticised for lack of clarity on safety, pollution, animal grazing, farming and displacement. The plant would discharge six million cubic metres of warm water into the sea daily. NEERI has brushed aside the impact on marine life, citing the Kalpakkam plant’s example. This is a specious comparison since the Jaitapur plant is 25 times bigger. The report is also mum on the impact of a 2,300 metre-long breakwater (stone barrier) to be built near the sea shore. It would cause deposition of sand near the Vijaydurg creek, blocking the natural flow of water. Radioactive waste is another contentious issue. Jain says the solid waste will be stored in lead containers buried in trenches dug into the earth. Naturally, people are worried about the impact on the groundwater table and soil. There seems to be some basis for this concern, as when TEHELKA visited the site, Nilesh More, 25, of Soham Foundation, Belapur, Navi Mumbai, who had come to collect soil samples, found that 20 metres down, porosity is almost 9-10 percent. The EIA was also debated upon in the public hearing organised by the environment ministry on 6 May this year. The minutes were sent to the ministry. A top NEERI official has told TEHELKA that radiological studies are not its area of expertise — these should be conducted by the Atomic Energy Regulatory Body (AERB). But since AERB also approves the technological designs in the capacity of a regulatory body, it would lead to conflict of interest.

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Loss of innocence Sanket Bhatkar, all of 18, charged with attempt to murder, vows to fight and save his village, Madban Lok Vidnyan Sangathana, a Mumbai-based organisation promoting public debate on scientific issues, has been debating the pros and cons of the project with top ranking AEC officials and the MoEF. Its convenor, Adwait Pednekar, says, “We want the process of regulation to be brought in public domain by AERB. The people want to express their views. Until and unless the process is transparent, the existing EIA should not be approved and in the meanwhile a fresh EIA should be prepared, addressing every important factor.” The people of Madban are obviously a gritty, determined lot, who are sustaining this protest without political help. And as a precursor to a prolonged agitation, they plan to go on hunger strike on Ganesh Chaturthi. As Nandkumar Raut, a villager, puts it, “What better way than praying to the Vighnaharta (the one who takes away sorrows and pain) to free us from this trouble?” The apprehensions at Jaitapur are clearly a fallout of the whispers about health hazards at the ‘crown jewel’ of India’s nuclear power programme, Tarapur Atomic Power Station (TAPS), 600 km away. When we visited villages near TAPS, a worker from Unit 4, on condition of anonymity, narrated a telling incident which led to a 14-day shutdown. “There is a chamber where robotic arms open and close the vault where enriched fuel bundles are replaced. The ball screw of one of the robotic arms, which was holding the spent fuel, fell down and the fuel rods were dangling precariously. After much deliberation, the expert team assigned workers to do the job: the robotic arm was held by heavy chains and the spent fuel rods were pushed back,” he said. ASKED ABOUT this incident, S Bhattacharjee, station director of units one and two, conceded there was a two-week shutdown but dismissed the possibility of such a sequence of events. “Although I am not in charge of that unit, I can say with confidence that workers could not have been involved in the rescue operation,” he said. “They don’t know anything about it.” ‘The people want to express their views. Until and unless the process is transparent, the existing EIA must not be approved,’ says Adwait Pednekar This claim, that the layman cannot understand technicalities and must perhaps subordinate his health to national interest, is hardly likely to be valid in the next decade. When TAPS came up in 1969, there was no public awareness of safety issues. After the Bhopal gas disaster judgements and the fuss over the Nuclear Liability Bill, however, the public has woken up to the dangers. Rajesh Keware, a 34-year-old pharmacist from a primary health centre in Dandi village near the plant, said that out of 17 cases of tuberculosis treated there this year, five worked at the plant. TEHELKA tried to obtain records of cancer and tuberculosis patients from doctors running private dispensaries. Most were hostile; some were reticent, while one doctor refused to divulge information. It is this lack of transparency that is worrying the local people at a time when the government pays lip service to involving all stakeholders in decision-making processes. They do not want another Chernobyl or Three Mile Island on their shores.

Kashmir's new Islamist movement Leaders of the protests see street violence as a crucible in which a new generation of jihadists is

being forged.

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Praveen Swami Sep 17, 2010 The Hindu Last week, on the Monday before Eid, Mohammad Shafi Wani opened his grocery store in Srinagar's Karan Nagar neighbourhood. Each of his gestures —rolling up the shutter, dusting off the shelves, opening the long-locked cash till — was an act of defiance, perhaps even suicidal rashness. Kashmir's Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, the anti-India Islamist coalition spearheading the protests that have claimed more than 80 lives in clashes with police this year, had decreed that shops would remain shut until 2:00 pm; Wani had opened for business at mid-day. “Get lost,” a local resident recalls Wani saying to two young men who showed up to warn him, “I'm not having a bunch of kids telling me what I can do.” The boys left — but returned with reinforcements. Wani ended up in hospital; the police watched him being beaten but did nothing. Early this week, the Tehreek decreed that day would henceforth be night. It ordered that businesses and factories work through the hours of darkness to make up for the time spent protesting. Many fear that September 21, when the Tehreek-i-Hurriyat has called on volunteers to march on military outposts, will see horrific violence. That is precisely what the New Islamists seek: for them, Kashmir's streets are the crucible in which a new generation of jihadists, who will wage a this-time successful war for independence, are being forged. Islamist patriarch Syed Ali Shah Geelani's Rudad-i-Qafas, or ‘Records of Jail,' an 800-page, two-volume reflection on politics and life written while he was incarcerated at New Delhi, Jammu and Allahabad from 1990-1992, gives some insight into the ideological underpinning of the street rebellion. In a 2004 appraisal of the Rudad-i-Qafas, scholar Yoginder Sikand pointed to Mr. Geelani's concerns that the independence movement in Jammu and Kashmir had “actually gone out of the control of the political leadership and into the hands of militant youth who, though fired by a passionate sense of zeal, have little understanding of the problem as well as the uphill task of resolving it.” He argued that “the youth ought to have entered the movement under the leadership of a truly Islamic and honest political leadership.” Instead, Kashmir's young jihadists had acted “unfettered by any authority above them as if they have ‘sworn not to accept any political leadership at all'.” “They have,” he concluded, “apparently miscalculated the enormity of the demands of the struggle and the strength of the power they are fighting against, fondly imagining that their goal would be achieved in no time.” Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, in the years that followed the publication of the Rudad-i-Qafas, threw its resources behind the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen — led, in the main, by figures drawn from the Jamaat-e-Islami. But as the conflict dragged, the Jamaat sensed defeat — and drew back. In 1997, the then Jamaat chief G.M. Bhat called for an end to the “gun culture.” Three years later, dissident Hizb commander Abdul Majid Dar declared a unilateral ceasefire. Although the ceasefire fell apart, the Jamaat itself continued to marginalise Mr. Geelani. In May 2003, Jamaat moderates led by Bhat's successor, Syed Nasir Ahmad Kashani, retired Mr. Geelani as their political representative. In January 2004, the Jamaat's Majlis-e-Shoora, or central consultative council, went public with a commitment to a “democratic and constitutional struggle.”

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Mr. Geelani, cast out from the mainstream of the Jamaat, set about building a new political movement; the kind of political movement he believed had led to the failure of the jihad. Like others in the Jamaat-e-Islami, Mr. Geelani had long believed India posed an existential threat to Islam in Kashmir. In the Rudad-e-Qafas, he castigated India for its failure to hold a plebiscite on Jammu and Kashmir's future; its violations of the democratic process; and its use of the armed force after 1989-1990. But he underlined the growth of Hindu communalism from the mid-1980s, seeing it as an enterprise to erase Islam. Mr. Geelani even found evidence of this enterprise in prison: the ‘martyrdom' of Muslim prisoners' beards at the hands of jailers and their being refused permission to pray. “Cultural hegemony,” he concluded, “is a logical culmination of political supremacy.” From 2003, Mr. Geelani turned to a new group of lieutenants to fight India's growing “political supremacy”: among them lawyer Mian Abdul Qayoom, activists like Mehrajuddin Kalwal and Jamaat apparatchiks like Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai. It was Massrat Alam Bhat, however, who was to become the most important figure in the new Islamic coalition. Born in old-city Srinagar's Zaindar Mohalla in July 1971, Bhat studied in Srinagar's élite Cecil Earle Tyndale-Biscoe school before joining the Sri Pratap college. He was first arrested by the Border Security Force in October 1990, on charges of serving as a lieutenant to the then-prominent jihadist Mushtaq Ahmad Bhat. He won a protracted legal battle in 1997 and began working at a cloth store owned by his grandfather, graduating the next year. From 1999, Bhat became increasingly active in the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference. He drew much of his core cadre from one-time jihadists who had been released — only to find they had neither prestige, power nor prospects. Bhat's Muslim League Jammu Kashmir's objective, its website explains, “besides fighting Indian aggression, is to propagate Islamic teachings to fight out socialism and secularism to remove taguti [false leaders; traitors] rule and to extirpate the western ideology.” Just two of the Muslim League's eight-point charter of objectives are, as such, concerned with the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir. It seeks the “building up of public opinion about the issue of Jammu and Kashmir on [the] international front,” and promises to “organise rallies and congregations to achieve the right to self-determination.” But the bulk of the Muslim League's objectives centres around forging a new political culture. It promises to “inculcate [a] sense of religious duties, character building and make the youth politically conscious;” to “safeguard the youths against any anti-Islamic move;” “to make aware the Muslims about the policies and plans of the aggressors and ensure that they follow the path of the Quran and the Sunnah to become one entity; to resist “misinformation campaigns against [the] Islamic system on the part of various imperialistic forces;” and, more generally, “to work for the welfare of the people.” Now serving a life sentence for the assassination of human rights campaigner H.N. Wanchoo, imprisoned jihadist Muhammad Qasim Faktoo was key to shaping Bhat's ideological vision. Faktoo, who acquired a doctorate in Islamic studies while in prison, founded his religious beliefs on the teachings of the neo-fundamentalist Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith — not Mr. Geelani's Jamaat-e-Islami. Long an anti-India political activist, Faktoo was led into the Hizb by Mohammad Abdullah Bangroo who, many years later, presided over the assassination of the influential Srinagar cleric Mirwaiz Mohammad Farooq — father of the current chairperson of the APHC, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. In 1990, Faktoo and Hilal Mir, better known by the code-name Nasir-ul-Islam, broke from the Hizb to form the Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen, upset with its linkages to the Jamaat-e-Islami.

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From jail, the Jammu and Kashmir Police allege, Faktoo mentored a new generation of jihadists. The police say he inspires two organisations — the al-Nasireen and the Farzandan-e-Millat — responsible for the killings of officers last August and September. The name al-Nasireen, a reference to the companions of Prophet Mohammad, is thought to draw on the nom de guerre of Faktoo's Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen co-founder. Farzandan-e-Millat, or sons of the nation, mirrors that of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat, daughters of the nation, an organisation run by Faktoo's wife, Asiya Andrabi. Ms Andrabi is the youngest child of the prominent Srinagar doctor, Sayeed Shahabuddin Andrabi. The 1962-born Ms Andrabi has an undergraduate degree in biochemistry, and hoped to study further in Dalhousie. Forbidden from leaving home, she turned to religion. From 1982, she set up a network of religious schools and campaigned against obscenity in popular television programming. Both Bhat and Andrabi played a key role in organising protests against the grant of land-use rights to the Amarnath shrine board in 2008 — a communally-charged campaign that brought tens of thousands of people to the streets. The networks used then were patiently built over years, in the course of struggles against prostitution and alcohol-use; campaigns for the enforcement of social morality targeting western cultural practices; and human rights abuses by Indian security forces. In 1990, the Time Magazine carried an evocative account of the first uprising, the failure of which Mr. Geelani so evocatively wrote of: “‘Brave Kashmiris,' came the summons from loudspeakers in minarets throughout Srinagar, summer capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, ‘the time has come to lay down your lives. Come out and face the occupation forces as true soldiers of Islam.' By the thousands, Muslim separatists answered the call last week. Enraged by the detention of 400 locals accused of terrorism, they surged through the narrow alleys of the decrepit city, chanting ‘Indian dogs, go home!' and pelting the police and soldiers with stones. Security forces replied first with tear gas, then with rifle fire. By the week's end, at least 133 people had been killed, nearly doubling, to 279, the death count since the latest round of trouble in Kashmir began 18 months ago.” Those words could also be a prophecy of what lies ahead. JAMMU & KASHMIR

Key players SHUJAAT BUKHARI in Srinagar Sep. 11-24, 2010 THE HINDU

. THE political unrest in Kashmir has completed three months with no end in sight. It is essentially fuelled by secessionist sentiment, and the “command and control” is generally with the youth who are not organised at the macro level but surely at the micro level. The protest calendars are framed by the hard-line separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who heads one faction of the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC). Geelani emerged as the “strong voice” of the current agitation along with Massarat Alam Bhat and Asiya Andrabi. Massarat Alam has gone underground and Asiya was arrested on August 28. The 81-year-old Geelani is seen as an icon of the “freedom struggle” by most young people in Kashmir. Notwithstanding his hard-line pro-Pakistan views and uncompromising stand on the

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Kashmir issue, he consolidated the pro-freedom sentiment that was revived after the killing of a teenager, Tufail Mattoo, on June 11. The civilian toll has now gone up to 65. With resentment brewing among a section of Kashmiris over prolonged strikes resulting in closures of businesses and educational institutions, people in general still adhere to Geelani's calendars in letter and spirit. People open and close the markets as he directs. It is Geelani who calls the shots in the Kashmir valley. The government has lost control over the affairs of the State, and moderates in the separatist camp do not dare challenge Geelani's writ. Insiders say that he might have given a second thought to the strike programme, which has brought life in Kashmir to a grinding halt for three months now. But he is under tremendous pressure from his men, notably Massarat Alam, not to “dilute” the “strong” anti-India movement. He was accused of a “sell-out” in the 2008 agitation, which was called off after the Amarnath land issue was settled. Geelani is known for his pro-Pakistan stand and has been in the news with his glorification of militant activities. He even took on his parent organisation, the Jamaat-e-Islami, which was in favour of toeing a moderate line. He floated the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat after the Hurriyat Conference split in 2003. When the moderate faction of the Hurriyat Conference, led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, entered into a dialogue process with New Delhi in 2004, Geelani dismissed it as a “futile exercise”, thus further consolidating the “anti-India” sentiment on the ground. ASIYA ANDRABI, LEADER of Dukhtaran-e-Millat. She has been a supporter of an "Islamic state". His stand was vindicated as nothing came out of the talks, mainly owing to the rigidity on New Delhi's part. Meanwhile, in Kashmir, Geelani dominated the secessionist camp, with people hailing him as a “leader with consistency”. His position was strengthened to the extent that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah sent a close aide to him, while he was in jail, to buy peace during the current phase of the agitation. Even the national TV channels were forced to give prominence to his appeal for “peaceful agitation”. In fact, Geelani's political career has been a mixture of everything. After his early, though brief, association with the National Conference (N.C.), he devoted himself to the Jamaat-e-Islami and played an important role in furthering its education agenda. He fought elections and was a member of the State Assembly for three terms. Though he now denounces the Assembly as the meeting place of “Indian agents”, his party chose the path of electoral politics way back in 1972 when the N.C. was fighting for a plebiscite. Even in 1989, when militancy first erupted in Kashmir, the Jamaat-e-Islami initially distanced itself from the new strategy to “throw India out”. But it was forced to “own” it with the floating of Hizbul Mujahideen, which is the only indigenous militant outfit still operating in Kashmir. The Jamaat made the shift under pressure from its cadre for fear of losing political power to the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, which has a secular orientation. Now that Geelani has donned the mantle of being the “sole arbitrator” of the Kashmir's struggle, the onus is on him to give it a productive direction. He has often called the current phase a “turning point” in Kashmir's “struggle for freedom” but has so far failed to move it forward towards a resolution. If New Delhi and its allies in Srinagar are waiting for a “fizzle out” to make him “irrelevant”, it falls upon him to prove them wrong and avoid adopting a strategy that will tire out the masses. MASSARAT ALAM

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The 37-year-old hard-core Islamist is an ardent follower of Geelani. Educated in a missionary school, he graduated with a degree in science from a local college. Orphaned at the age of 10, he comes from a middle-class family that owned a chain of garment shops in Srinagar. Head of the pro-Pakistan Muslim League, Massarat Alam emerged as the powerful manager of the ‘Geelanised' agitation in Kashmir in 2008. For most of the past two years, he was in jail for organising first the Amarnath land agitation and then the protests against the alleged rape and murder of two women in Shopian. MASSARAT ALAM. HE frames the protest calendars jointly with Geelani. He was released from jail on June 8, three days before the killing of Tufail Mattoo, which set off the current agitation. Since then, he has kept the Omar Abdullah government on tenterhooks. He operates with a strong network of highly motivated young people, himself remaining underground. Earlier, he used to implement his programme mostly on mobile phones, but now he is incommunicado, with his statements coming through the Internet. He followed the example of Osama bin Laden when he released a DVD for circulation with his message asking “Indian troops” to withdraw. Amid reports that he had lately developed differences with his mentor, the protest calendars are being framed by the two of them in tandem. Carrying a cash reward of Rs.5 lakh on his head, Massarat Alam is today the most wanted separatist figure in Kashmir. Whether arresting him will douse the fires remains to be seen. ASIYA ANDRABI Arrested on August 28, Asiya was a force multiplier with Massarat Alam. The two of them are believed to have prevailed on Geelani to stick to the hard line. Asiya, 47, is the only woman separatist leader in Kashmir to be reckoned with. She minces no words on her strong pro-Pakistan and Islamist leanings. She shot into prominence in the late 1980s when she launched the Dukhtaran-e-Millat, essentially against social vices. She tried to force women to wear veils but did not succeed much. She attacked beauty parlours, restaurants and internet cafes. She also joined the separatist campaign that began with the armed insurgency in 1990. She has been a strong supporter of an “Islamic state” and the State's merger with Pakistan. She has been jailed several times for glorifying and supporting militant activities. Her infant son spent a year with her in jail. Taking advantage of being on the militant side, she tried her best to force women to follow Islamic ideals. Asiya Andrabi is married to former militant commander and Islamist separatist leader Aashiq Hussain Faktoo alias Mohammad Qasim, who is serving a life sentence for the murder of noted human rights activist H.N. Wanchoo. JAMMU & KASHMIR

First steps The situation in Kashmir calls for immediate steps to create conditions conducive to a two-pronged

dialogue process. A.G. NOORANI

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Sep. 11-24, 2010 THE HINDU

“WHAT happens is that only the shell is there. Article 370, whether you keep it or not, has been completely emptied of its contents. Nothing has been left in it.” This is not the bitter reproach of a Kashmiri. It was the proud boast of a Union Home Minister as far back as on December 4, 1964. G.L. Nanda added that Article 370 “is a tunnel. It is through this tunnel that a good deal of traffic has already passed and more will.” He reeled off the constitutional provisions already applied to Jammu and Kashmir and promised that more would come. The Sadar-e-Riyasat would be replaced by a Governor. Article 356, on President's Rule, would be applied. “Since the new government took charge there with Mr G.M. Sadiq as the head of that government this process has been accelerated.” Article 370 records a compact. A constitutional provision negotiated between the State of Jammu and Kashmir and the Union, for five months from May to October 1949, designed to preserve and protect autonomy was itself used to destroy it. The 1949 accord was violated. But Article 370 (2) explicitly limits the power of the State government to “concur” in any extension of Central power to the period before Jammu and Kashmir's Constituent Assembly was convened. It makes its ratification obligatory. The Constituent Assembly met on October 31, 1951. A formal resolution moved by Mir Qasim on November 17, 1956, said “this Assembly resolves that it shall stand dissolved on the 26 {+t} {+h} day of January 1957”. Nanda had a ready answer to that. “The Constituent Assembly is gone. Therefore, the proviso is otiose… and the President has got unfettered powers to act under clause (3).” He asked Members of Parliament, why abrogate it when it could be used to enhance Central power? This is the reality of Kashmir's special status. If a matter in the State List is to be transferred to the Union List, Parliament will have to adopt a Constitution amendment by a two-thirds vote and one-half of the States have to ratify it (Article 368, Section 2). But, in relation to Kashmir the entire State List can be taken over by the Centre by a mere executive order under Article 370, provided a State government (in power notoriously through a rigged or managed election and dependent on Congress support) “concurs” with it. G.A. Lone, Jammu and Kashmir's Law Secretary, exposed how a Central appointee, Governor Jagmohan, “by sheer manipulation” got Article 249 (the residuary power of legislation) applied to the State ( Kashmir Times; April 20, 1995). On July 23, 1975, an order (CO101) under Article 370 amended the State Constitution to debar it from restoring the Sadar-e-Riyasat. Nowhere else in the world can you find such constitutional skulduggery – a Constitution amendment by an executive order. President Rajendra Prasad reminded Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru as much on September 6, 1952: “Nowhere else, as far as I can see, is there any provision authorising the executive governments to make amendments in the Constitution.” In July 1953, Nehru sounded Sheikh Abdullah through Maulana Azad if he would settle up on the basis that Article 370 “will be made permanent”. The Sheikh replied to the Maulana that he might have earlier, but in 1953 it lacked political support. Only an India-Pakistan accord could bring peace. Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram's pledge on August 25 to “redeem the promises made” will have to reckon with a sordid record of broken pledges, including the Delhi Agreement, which guaranteed a Sadar-e-Riyasat elected by Jammu and Kashmir's Assembly. It is a measure of the prestige which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh enjoys that even those who find nothing substantial in his remarks at the all-party meeting on Kashmir, on August 10, laud his sincerity of purpose.

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“I recognise that the key to the problem is a political solution that addresses the alienation and emotional needs of the people. This can only be achieved through a sustained internal and external dialogue” (emphasis added, throughout). This is probably the first time that a Prime Minister has acknowledged (a) the fact of “alienation” and (b) the linkage between an internal “and external dialogue”. The people of Kashmir demand not only self-rule but also an India-Pakistan settlement that will end the uncertainty and ensure peace. An economist of repute, Manmohan Singh decided consciously to break from the past in the nation's own interest and proclaimed the resolve publicly even before taking the oath of office. On May 20, 2004, The Statesman published his interview at breakfast to Jonathan Power “a few months ago”. Neither the guest nor the host imagined that the host would become India's Prime Minister before long. In a tour d'horizon, Pakistan loomed large. His remarks bear quotation in extenso for they reveal a sound blend of enlightened self-interest and idealism: “Then, we have to find a way to stop talking of war with Pakistan. This is stopping us realising our potential. Two nuclear-armed powers living in such close proximity is a big problem. We have an obligation to ourselves to solve this problem.” Jonathan Power reported: “I pushed him on how far he himself would accept compromise with Pakistan over Kashmir.” This is crucial. Manmohan Singh's reply was candid and positive. “Short of secession, short of redrawing boundaries, the Indian establishment can live with anything. Meanwhile, we need soft borders – then borders are not so important.” A year later, he said they would become “irrelevant”. What of a plebiscite? “No government in India could survive that. Autonomy, we are prepared to consider. All these things are negotiable.” In the negotiations in the back channel, India accepted grant of self-rule to both parts of Kashmir, demilitarisation, redundancy of the Line of Control, and a joint mechanism. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi declared, in Islamabad on July 15, that progress made in talks in the past would not be set at naught. This was widely hailed in India. In 2007 we were close to an India-Pakistan accord on Kashmir. Idealism, doubtless, motivated the Prime Minister's policy. But so did a sensible, mature appraisal of the nation's interest in settling the Kashmir dispute. Self-rule was an integral part of the four-point formula on which India and Pakistan worked from 2004 to 2007. A totally revised Article 370, with guarantees against abuse, fits the formula like a glove (see the author's draft of Article 370 in Frontline; December 18, 2009). However, the situation calls for immediate ameliorative steps to create conditions conducive to a two-pronged dialogue. One is reform of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA), which the Army has obstructed long to the detriment of the national interest. It is a revolting obscenity. But even before that, it is urgently imperative that New Delhi shed its opposition even to peaceful expressions of the people's sentiments. How touchy it can be was graphically demonstrated in a circular issued by Yogesh Gupta, Joint Secretary (Coord) of the Ministry of External Affairs, dated August 25, 2006, addressed to Dr George Mathew, Director, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi. It said: “Reference to your letter to seek political clearance for holding a conference on ‘Indian Federalism at work' at Sher-e-Kashmir International Conference Centre, Srinagar, from August 25-27, 2006. Approval for holding of this conference is given subject to the following conditions: (i) Institute of Social Sciences (ISS) will not accept any foreign funding to hold this conference; (ii) There will be no official endorsement or official funding from the Government of India (GOI) to this conference; (iii) The association of Shri N.N. Vohra with this initiative is at a

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personal level and has no connection with his role as the Special Representative on J&K Dialogue; … (vi) Participation would be limited to those who have proven track record on issues relating to federalism – the theme of the conference; (vii) Participation of those espousing violence and militancy to change the status quo should be absolutely avoided; (viii) Preferably the choice of the venue should be other than Srinagar. This issues with the approval of Prime Minister's Office” (that is, M.K. Narayanan, then the National Security Adviser). CPI(M)'s bold views The letter was issued with the foresight and efficiency characteristic of New Delhi, for which it is famed the world over, on the very day that the conference met. Students and teachers from Kashmir University were delighted to interact with the participants. It was a huge success, as this writer can testify. We need more of such meetings and in Srinagar itself. In the same spirit, Prakast Karat, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and Mohammad Salim, central committee member, deserve praise for visiting Srinagar on August 23. One wishes they had done so much earlier. This was the first visit by a leader of a national party to the State in the nearly three months of the latest crisis. By the way, whatever happened to the “national” parties which, without any presence in the State, mushroomed there on the eve of the 2008 elections? Their presence was attributed to the very forces which delivered the eight Srinagar seats to Omar Abdullah to enable him to form a government. Prakash Karat's words were as bold as they were timely: “There can be no justification for the deaths. To meet the stone-throwing protesters with firing shouldn't be condoned or even thought of in a democratic country like India.” He called for an amendment to the AFSPA. “Given the significant decrease in militancy, the DAA [Disturbed Areas Act] should be withdrawn from Srinagar and other civilian areas. This will make the use of the AFSPA redundant in those areas.” Another point he made was about “cases of children less than 18 years put in jail…. These young people must not be kept in jail” and “there has to be a strict no-firing policy to face stone-throwing crowds. Other measures are to be resorted to in such confrontations.” Prakash Karat had no hesitation in naming the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). “We're appalled and shocked at the deaths of 62 young boys and girls in the past few weeks due to firing by the Central paramilitary and police forces.” On August 20, an officer of the State police accused the CRPF of causing the death of Mudassir Ahmad, aged 18, in Sopore. “We have lodged an FIR under S. 302 Ranbir Penal Code (murder) for killing the boy. There were no protests in the area and the firing was unprovoked” ( The Telegraph; August 21). This was by no means the first instance of the local police lodging an FIR against the CRPF. On August 13, the State police protested to the CRPF. Prakash Karat added: “We are of the view that the dialogue with Pakistan must be resumed and should cover all issues. There should be a sustained political dialogue with all sections in Jammu and Kashmir to reach a political settlement. The process of dialogue should be open-ended and without preconditions” ( The Hindu; Indian Express; and Asian Age; August 24). If there is one thing that more than any other calls for an immediate decision it is on the right to march peacefully. On August 4, the highly respected leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani disclosed that Devender Singh Rana, “political adviser” to Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, had met him in the Chashma Shahi sub-jail. “He came to me on July 22 at 8 p.m. without any prior appointment or my consent, and told me that they were ready to give me space for my cause but it should be peaceful.”

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Geelani Saheb added that Rana asked whether “I was against the NC-led government. I told him that it was irrelevant for me as to who would rule the state….” It was the resolution of the Kashmir dispute that he sought ( The Hindu; August 5). But, of course, the assurance was broken. Peaceful marches are disrupted. The sordid attempt to compromise Geelani failed miserably. The episode reveals the style of functioning of Omar Abdullah and his factotum. Which other Chief Minister can boast of such a genius in so high a place? All of which shows that Omar Abdullah has stumbled as he has, not because of the circumstances but because of his own inherent flaws that render him totally unfit to be Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. There is little hope for improvement while he holds that office. The Centre will not remove him because he serves as a buffer, little realising that his removal would itself be a resounding confidence-building measure (CBM). The Centre can and must immediately and fundamentally abandon its policy in peaceful marches. In 2008, M.K. Narayanan imposed a crackdown in Kashmir on the eve of a peaceful March. Jammu protesters were handled with kid gloves. One must grasp realistically the fears that have gripped Indian leaders and inspire their outrageous conduct. The fear is that if the people are allowed to come out on the streets and the cries of “azadi” rent the air, what will happen to our atoot ang (integral part)? The fear is too puerile for words. It is destructive of the very aim the leaders have in mind. Amusingly, in recent years, some of our columnists and TV anchors and analysts have begun to question what “azadi” means. As if they do not know. Evidently, they do not wish to know that in the Kashmiri context, it means secession from the Union, pure and simple. And in this the pro-Pakistanis and the supporters of independence are united. No one cares to think of a constructive response which will spell out “azadi” within the Indian Union by an accord with Pakistan which covers West Kashmir as well. The only response New Delhi can think of is suppression of the march, if need be, by killing the young, the women and the unarmed protester. What has it achieved? Already memories are scarred. The Chief Minister on whose watch all this has happened is damaged goods; the shelf life of his father, the flamboyant Farooq Abdullah, expired long ago. Neither can deliver the people to the Union, still less the use of force. People throw stones because their peaceful march is obstructed, because they resent the onerous presence of the forces and hate their men who harass them daily and behave rudely. Suppression only aggravates the resentment. As Massarat Alam told Muzamil Zaleel of The Indian Express (August 29): “We want peaceful protests…. The problem is that they (the security forces) don't let people protest. They impose curfew and restrictions. They open fire straight at people. Then it becomes difficult to control passions and people rebel by throwing stones…. If the (government) allows protests I can vouch for the fact that nobody will throw stones.” As Edmund Burke said in the House of Commons on April 19, 1774: “First, Sir, permit me to observe that the use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered. “My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not always the effect of force; and an armament is not a victory. If you do not succeed, you are without resources; for, conciliation failing, force remains; but, force failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left. Power and authority are

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sometimes bought by kindness; but they can never be begged as alms by an impoverished and defeated violence. “A further objection to force is, that you impair the object by your very endeavours to preserve it. The thing you fought for is not the thing which you recover; but depreciated, sunk, wasted, and consumed in the contest.” In 2010, secession of Jammu and Kashmir is not a proposition canvassed in practical politics anywhere. The alternative to the suppression of peaceful marches is to allow them while offering to hold a dialogue in earnest. There will be some uneasiness initially, but if the Centre persists in decent conduct, a serious dialogue will ensure peace and confidence. Few things cheer Kashmiris more than the reality of serious dialogue between India and Kashmir, which is why the Manmohan Singh-Pervez Musharraf dialogue was lauded by Kashmiris across the political divide. The Prime Minister must restart this process. Domestically, the hard-pressed Home Minister P. Chidambaram might consider appointment on the quiet of an interlocutor, with the Minister's full confidence and authority, to prepare the ground for serious talks. Governor N.N. Vohra is well suited for this, following the precedent of Punjab Governor Arjun Singh's efforts to prepare for Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's decisive intervention later. For a healing touch More steps will improve the atmosphere by providing a healing touch – release of all prisoners against whom there are no serious charges; facilities for reunion of divided families; restoration of lands occupied by the Army and the paramilitary far beyond actual needs, including tourist spots, orchards and the university campus; freedom of movement across the LoC replacing the onerous bus travel conditions with the rahdari permit of old; promotion of cultural and academic exchanges across the LoC; replacement of the barter trade between East and West Kashmir with facilities for banking and communication, besides others as suggested by Haseeb A. Drabu, Chairman & CEO of J&K Bank. Time was when Kashmir University was the hub of academic life and commanded respect all over the country. Nothing will raise the morale and the spirits of the Kashmiri young, within and outside the university, more than the replacement of Riyaz Punjabi, a quintessentially Establishment man with slender academic credentials, by an academic who commands the respect of his students and their teachers. Prakash Karat said, “The situation here is extremely serious. We will go back and make people of India understand the need for a political solution to the Kashmir problem.” Will he indeed keep this promise? In 1953, after the upheaval following Sheikh Abdullah's arrest, the Praja Socialist Party sent Madhu Limaye and Sadiq Ali to the State to study the situation. Their Report on Kashmir, published by the PSP, is a neglected classic which is relevant still. It would help a lot if Prakash Karat would set up a small group of academics and public figures who would visit the State and report to the nation. As Ashok Mitra, who was Finance Minister in Jyoti Basu's Cabinet, aptly remarked, India also seems alienated from Kashmir ( The Telegraph; August 27). His censures bear quotation in extenso: “Behind the façade of the constitutional apparatus rests the nitty-gritty of rude fact: the valley is an occupied territory; remove for a day India's army and security forces and it is impossible to gauge

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what might transpire at the next instant. Some of the stone-pelters may nurse illusions about Pakistan, some may think in terms of a sovereign, self-governing Kashmir, but they certainly do not want to be any part of India…. The great Indian nation, with its load of civilisation stretching 5,000 years, is extraordinarily mum. “The media can afford to be full of narratives of sickeningly shady deals linked to the preparatory arrangements for the impending Commonwealth Games. But the debauching of civilisation in Kashmir, no matter what its underlying reason, creates no ripples. One is suddenly hit by a fearsome realisation: Indians by and large do not perhaps feel at all, this way or that, about the valley's people; in other words, the Indian nation is alienated from Kashmir.”

Bollywood realism When it comes to organised crime, the line between underground and overground is thin. Between

power politics and box office cinema, and audience consensus, this is the sleazy synthesis

Karen Gabriel Delhi 17 Sep 2010 | Hardnews Where there is money there is crime, and where there is big money, there are big crimes. This has become an unfortunate truism in today's India, which is witnessing a criminal plunder of public money and common resources in the name of national interest. Today, it is possible for a central minister to laugh away, in Parliament and with impunity, the disappearance of thousands of crores of public money earmarked for the Commonwealth Games. This fiasco was preceded by the expose on the IPL scam and has been accompanied by continuous reports of massive and massively lucrative illegal mining and land grab by private corporations and individuals. The public, quite rightly, apprehends that money will change hands and all of this will simply get hushed up. Think about it. Barely a year ago, this same public was informed that India had the dubious distinction of holding the largest amount of unaccounted money in Swiss banks - a whopping $1,456 billion. This was almost four times more than the holdings of the next country, Russia, which had notched up the relatively meagre sum of $470 billion. After some bluster from the BJP and its allies in the NDA who 'demanded' that that money be 'returned' to India, the story died. Just weeks back we learnt of the criminal complicity of the Congress high command in Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson's flight and its appalling consequences for the victims and survivors of the Bhopal gas tragedy who were left to die slowly for 26 long years. We read reports of Cobalt 6 radiation courtesy Delhi University and the vice chancellor's shameful cover-up manoeuvres. Ramalinga Raju, disgraced ex-chairman of Satyam Computer Services Ltd, with able assistance from the CBI, looks all set to walk away from a Rs 14,000 crore financial fraud case. Today, we, in the nation of the white-collar crime, await the passage of the Nuclear Liability Bill for which BJP's approval has no doubt been bought. Every time we stop at a traffic signal, we witness what the beggar mafia - made up of elements of the underworld, police, politicians and drug lords - has done to large sections of the urban poor. Little more has been done in all these instances besides publicly first stealing and then passing the buck.

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To what do we owe this silence? How do we explain the inaction? One clear explanation is that the ruling elite, which now includes the mainstream media, has arrived at a beneficial and self-protective consensus. It has become increasingly clear that the same politics and policies will persist irrespective of the colour of the party or alliance at the helm of affairs. It appears that we live in times in which the moral fault line is marked enough to become the hamartia of the global elite. It is indeed possible that we have made our peace with certain types of criminality which are now seen as an integral and inevitable part of the routine, natural phenomena of our everyday lives. Madhur Bhansarkar's 2007 film , Traffic Signal, its serious limitations notwithstanding, at least 'visibilised' the ubiquitous beggar, and everyone suddenly stared through their tinted glasses. Just for a moment. But why does the gaze falter? Why does it slide away? What has happened to our collective public memory? Have the features of the corporatised mainstream electronic news media - fragments of 24/7 'reality' (10-second bytes), bits of viewers ('eyeballs'), and prejudiced opinions that pass for analyses - become the condition of our memories? It is possible that now, most of us who once looked to the news media to provide us with full information and thought-provoking analyses, lack the time to first garner and then analyse information. It appears sometimes that we are in danger of losing the ability to transform bytes into thought. It appears that our collective imagination is being short-circuited by the blinding barrage of images, and we can no longer see the connections between these stories. Disconnected and, therefore, eminently forgettable fragments are all we are left with. Is this fragmented amnesiac existence the condition of our modernity? Societies have always turned to art to remind them of what is true and beautiful, to break the mould, to provoke change or at least refuse the comfort zone. Art is the interpretive repository of all that has been and can be. It is a testimony to human vision and memory. It has been the great bastion of anti-establishmentarianism. But can we expect this of art that is driven by commercial imperatives and the logic of the market? Can we, in other words, expect the same of cinema, the most significant art form of the 20th century? Especially since it is a very high-budget, high-risk affair with few fixed and legitimate sources of finance. If we can, it is because even though cinema, like television, is an audio-visual mass medium and purveyor of the fast-moving, flickering image and the visual fragment, it still retains narrative at its heart. And narrative is driven by causality and not the 24/7 diktat; it is preoccupied with the 'how' and 'why' of things, and is not satisfied with just the 'what'. However, apart from this commitment to elaboration, cinema has had much to say on issues of public morality and criminality. After all, it has dealt with the criminal nexus up close and personal for many decades now. Two months down the line, as soon as he wraps Part 2 of Sarkar, Ram Gopal Varma (RGV), god of the 'Factory' of underworld film and architect of torments like Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag and

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Darling, will begin shooting yet another big-budget gangland film. This trilingual film (Hindi, Tamil and Telugu) is titled The Business Man and is projected to hit the cinemas by April 2011. The gangland film, one RGV hobby horse, both reveals and explores cinema's established, troubled and intimate relation with Mumbai's mafia. Sanjay Dutt's arrest under TADA in 1993 publicly established the much-denied but well-known connection between the film world and the underworld. Even though the cinema industry's uneasy alliance with the underworld was weakened by the State after the 1993 blasts, it remained and gradually became increasingly exposed and visible. In March and August of 1997, director Mukesh Duggal and T-series music mogul Gulshan Kumar were murdered. An attempt was made to kill producer-director Rajiv Rai in July 1997, and producer Manmohan Shetty in December 1997. In 2000, filmmaker Rakesh Roshan was shot at for refusing overseas distribution rights for Hrithik Roshan's first film, Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai. According to Mumbai Police's Crime Branch files, Roshan admitted that after the attack on him, he paid Rs 10 crore to Abu Salem in lieu of the overseas distribution rights and to ensure that the film would be allowed a clean run in the US. Further disclosures of extortion and pressure by stars, and the tap on Karachi-based underworld don Chhota Shakeel's mobile phone in 2000 to confirm these allegations, led to the Mumbai police offering protection to about 35 film personalities and some uncanny arrests - famously, those of producer Nasim Rizvi and key financier Bharat Shah in December 2000. The arrest of Bharat Shah - multi-millionaire, diamond merchant and producer-financier of Hindi cinema - for his connections with the underworld, revealed that it was not just underworld black money, but large-scale black money from respectable businesses that was being pumped into the industry. It shook the imagination of the underworld. Shah, a respectable Jain businessman, known for his massive diamond trade, saatvik vegetarianism and charitable donations, turned out to be a conduit between the two apparently disconnected worlds. Soon enough, it became clear that cinematic representations in the vigilante film and the gangland film were spot on: all worlds intersect when it comes to crime. Quite naturally, then, Subhash Ghai, exasperated by the abiding naivety on this matter, advised the Hindu reporter who was interviewing him, to investigate the nexus between the police and the underworld, politicians and the underworld, and the police and the politicians. Producer Nitin Keni was similarly exasperated in a 2002 interview. Neither Ghai nor Keni was posturing. There is little confusion in their mind; Bombay cinema has been negotiating the off-screen presence of the underworld off and on screen for decades now. From the late 1960s and into the early 1970s, as the cosmology of Nehruvian socialism crumbled, the underworld expanded its operations, within and outside the world of film production. Deewar was followed by a host of Bachchan-dominated, multi-generic gangland-ish films: Mr Natwarlal, Don, Hum and, still later, Sarkar (with others in between). Along with many others, like Ardh Satya, Aakrosh, Dayavan, Parinda, Khalnayak, Satya, Company, Maqbool, these films together came to fictionalise and define the nature of criminality, systemic injustice and the world of crime, for the public imagination. They focused on the violence of this criminal world, its links with politics and politicians, the personal and psychological lives of its protagonists, and on the romanticised codes of (masculine)

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honour that under-grid even this sleazy world. The explicit portrayal of links between the underworld and the world of politics and politicians instituted the corrupt politician, bureaucrat and police official in the public imagination. The audience, however, interestingly enough, despite its own routine experience of this criminal nexus, appeared to view this as 'fiction', as far removed from the truth as from their own worlds. The spectacularisation of violence and incidents central to such films gets boosted by the spectacularisation inherent in a giant 70mm screen, enthralling filter technicolor and Dolby surround sound. So even while the medium with the greatest claim to verisimilitude, narrativised its very own experience of the criminal nexus between 'black' and 'white' worlds, and that too in 70mm, we did not really see. Or, more accurately, we missed the logic, and so, we failed to connect the dots. Perhaps that is the risk all fictional and cinematic narratives run. After all, apart from causality, they also provide characters, plot, action, which imbue narratives with an aura both of fictionality and of the real at the same time. So there is always room to shelter the escapist in us all. This is why the news media must refuse the nexus and do its job, and this is why RGV said that The Business Man will not be a flamboyant spectacle but a "realistic gritty dark film". As a film that aims to reveal the links between the underworld, entrepreneurship, politics and international organisations like CIA, it promises to change the imagination of the underworld and, consequently, of criminality itself, in very important ways. Whether it will or not remains to be seen. But if it does, it may be a film that will deconstruct the crafty and false spatialisation of the worlds into the dirty 'under-' and clean 'over-' ground ones, when they have been and are, in fact, continuous. White-collar crime has always needed the black market, the babu has always needed the bhai. In view of the corporate loot that is underway, RGV's film is aptly titled The Business Man. Ten years back, the Bharat Shah case threw this intimate link between the underworld, the world of business and the State machinery in our face. Recently, economist Arun Kumar of JNU, author of The Black Economy in India, drew our attention to the links between black money and legitimate businesses. He said that the black economy in India could be worth as much as $500 billion (which is about 50 per cent of the GDP), and that 80 per cent of this is generated by legal businesses. More than 10 years ago, Pavan Verma, in The Great Indian Middle Class, also put the size of the black economy at 50 per cent of the GDP. The size of the black economy is an index of the extent of white-collar crime in the country.Let's not be blind to the movement of money from Parliament, the gigantic treasure troves of our millionaire politicians, MPs and their super-rich dynasties, and the corporate houses to Swiss banks via the underworld. Let us open our eyes and connect the dots. Then, perhaps, this cinema will become both real and a revelation. …………………………….. The writer is Associate Professor of English at St Stephen's College, University of Delhi, and author of 'Melodrama

And The Nation: Sexual Economies Of Bombay Cinema 1970-2000' (Women Unlimited)

Nepal, China and India

Rivals on the roof of the world Great-power rivalry grows in the Himalayas

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Sep 16th 2010 | KATHMANDU From The Economist Print Edition

Rakesh Sood (right), treading gingerlyEARLY in September a group of Nepali newspaper editors were having dinner when, one by one, their phones started ringing. The man on the other end, whom they said was the Indian ambassador, Rakesh Sood, wanted to know whether their papers would be running stories on a sensational audio recording then doing the rounds. The recording purports to be an intercepted telephone call between a senior Maoist leader, Krishna Mahara, and an unknown man, Chinese from his accent; the two are discussing the use of $6.75m to bribe members of parliament to elect a Maoist prime minister. A great deal about this story is murky. It has not been confirmed either by Mr Sood or Mr Mahara. The Chinese embassy has denied any involvement and the tape’s authenticity has not been established. Still, two things are clear. First, the intrigue comes at a sensitive time for Nepal’s ailing peace process, which is meant to end ten years of Maoist insurgency. United Nations’ monitoring of the process came up for renewal this week. Second, it shows that Nepal’s domestic tussles are increasingly sucking in India and China, the rival powers that surround the country. Aptly enough, just when the editors received the calls supposedly from the ambassador of one giant neighbour, they were dining with the ambassador of the other. India has long been influential in Nepal, which it regards as a buffer against China. Roughly half of Nepal’s trade is with its southern neighbour and the country ties its currency to the Indian rupee. In contrast, China has played a low-key role in Nepal until recently. But the emergence of the Maoists as the largest party has shifted the balance, with India becoming more closely aligned with the anti-Maoist faction. The prime minister, Madhav Kumar Nepal, says India’s government distrusts them and wants the party to make sweeping changes to its organisation and beliefs. Parliamentary elections in 2008 gave the Maoists 40% of members of parliament, twice as many as their nearest rival. During a brief stint in government, the Maoists cultivated closer relations with China, much to India’s alarm. The Maoist-led coalition collapsed last year, to be replaced by an anti-Maoist one backed by India and—some think—cobbled together by it. But the new government has been unable to impose its authority. The process of integrating former Maoist fighters has stalled, along with attempts to write a new constitution. Anti-Maoists are challenging the peace agreements while parliament has been deadlocked since June over the election of a new prime minister. Political paralysis has given rise to accusations of meddling by India. Last month, for example, after a round of voting for the new prime minister, one MP said his daughter stood to lose her scholarship in India if he voted Maoist. Senior staff at the country’s largest newspaper group, which Indian diplomats think hostile to their country, say they have been unable to get newsprint through India and that Indian companies have been asked to withdraw advertising. Indian diplomats say such claims are false and that they are victims of a smear. But politicians of all stripes think India is trying to micro-manage Nepal and anti-Indian sentiment runs high. Indian diplomats “swagger around like viceroys,” complains Ramesh Nath Pandey, a conservative former foreign minister. Meanwhile the peace process is foundering, dragging both sides into the mire. Under agreements signed in 2006, the United Nations monitors the behaviour of the former combatants. But this week the Nepali government wrote to the UN secretary general, without consulting the Maoists,

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indicating that it wanted the army exempted from monitoring, which the Maoists reject. Although the UN mandate was renewed for four months, the ceasefire is looking ever more threadbare. Being sandwiched between two giants might seem promising for a poor country. With skill, Nepal could play one off against the other. Instead, with peace in the balance and fears growing that both neighbours are vying to pick the next prime minister, Nepal risks being ground between their vaulting regional ambitions.

Pakistan

After the deluge The waters are receding, but the damage done to Pakistan will take years—and better

government—to undo

Sep 16th 2010 | Charsadda, Islamabad and Rajanpur From The Economist Print Edition THE helicopter drops over a narrow embankment, showering the skinny men and boys perched on it with flotsam and brown floodwater. They rush forwards, waving and yelling soundlessly against the roar of rotary blades. Six weeks after torrential rains caused the Indus river to break its banks, inundating their mud-walled villages in Rajanpur, a district of southern Punjab, their anguish is not feigned. They are hungry, destitute and still marooned by a floodwater sea. Through the chopper’s open door, Shahbaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab, pitches a sack of food, then looks down and heaves out another. The younger brother of Pakistan’s opposition leader and twice prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, whose Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) rules Punjab, Mr Sharif has spent almost every day since the floods hit marshalling dykes and dispensing relief. His rivals accuse him of taking political advantage from the deluge, which at its height submerged a fifth of Pakistan’s area and affected over 20m people. But the country would be in less calamitous shape if more officials worked as hard as he. Touching down in Daira Din Panah, a small town with its lovely blue-tiled Sufi shrine surrounded by acres of soggy, dead sugar-cane, the chief minister roused the assembled crowd, promising gifts for the Muslim festival of Eid ul-Fitr, which was celebrated in Pakistan on September 11th. He then visited the town’s clinic, checked that its walls were drying, demanded to see that its x-ray machine was still working, congratulated its exhausted medical staff—then left to perform much the same routine elsewhere. It was well done. But the tour of three sodden Punjabi districts highlighted huge worries. First, the flood damage is massive. Perhaps a fifth of Punjab’s cotton and cane crops, which are due to be harvested in October, has been destroyed, and no one knows how long it will take before the province’s waterlogged fields can be replanted. Across Pakistan, nearly 2m houses have been damaged or destroyed, including over 1.1m in Sindh province, where the worst flooding remains. Over 5,000km (3,000 miles) of roads and 7,000 schools have been affected. More than 200,000 livestock have drowned. The UN World Food Programme expects to feed 6m Pakistanis for the next six months. The World Health Organisation is anticipating 1.5m cases of diarrhoea. Yusuf Raza Gilani, prime minister of the federal government, a coalition led by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), has put the economic cost at $43 billion, though few consider that figure credible. The World Bank is preparing a more serious estimate.

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No government could cope well with such a calamity, and Pakistan’s is unusually incapable. Punjab is the country’s richest and most populous province but, according to Khalid Sherdil, the head of the provincial Disaster Relief Authority, its government has found only $6m to spend on flood relief. Over half a million houses are said to be damaged in Punjab, yet it has been able to provide only 30,000 tents. Its chief minister said he had no choice but to lead from the muddy front because his district officials, the main dispensers of public services in British-built South Asia, could not otherwise be relied upon. Since the floodwater hit Punjab at the end of August, after flash-floods in northern Swat (where most of the disaster’s 1,800-odd deaths occurred), Mr Sharif has sacked the bosses of two of Punjab’s six worst-affected districts. And he disparaged the rest: “I’ve found most have brains below average.” The central government has also struggled. Though it had recently devolved many responsibilities to the provinces, its superior resources gave it the lead when the waters rose. But it was slow off the mark. The National Disaster Management Authority, set up at America’s expense after 3m people were displaced by fighting in the Swat area last year, had only a dozen staff and fewer computers. And the government’s efforts to drum up emergency help have shown how unpopular it is. President Asif Zardari, the PPP’s leader and widower of its assassinated former leader, Benazir Bhutto, was castigated for visiting, by helicopter, his French chateau a few days after the disaster struck. He has an unmatched (though unproven) reputation for corruption. Yet light-fingered supporters of Mr Gilani are allegedly attempting to rival it. As a result, while rattling the tin at home and abroad, Pakistan’s leaders have been forced to issue humiliating assurances that any donations they collect will not be stolen. Mr Gilani, who was once viewed by many as a potential counterweight to the divisive Mr Zardari, has suffered a separate humiliation. It was reported that at least two relief camps he has visited with journalists were of the Potemkin sort, put up for his convenience. Flood-damaged rulers Foreign donors were also slow to respond to the catastrophe, due to its unfolding nature and, perhaps, its relatively low death toll. But the World Bank and Asian Development Bank have promised $3 billion in soft loans. America has promised to donate $250m and Saudi Arabia $106m. More pledges are expected next month at a gathering of anxious well-wishers, mostly Western and Arab governments, known as the “Friends of Democratic Pakistan”. Improving matters, this week the government started dispensing 20,000 rupees ($230) in cash, by way of special debit cards, to 2m flood-hit families. This is an excellent idea, tried out in Swat last year. Like the relief effort at large, however, it will inevitably fall short of so many destitute people’s needs. And this is likely to hurt the PPP most because the flooding is mainly in its strongholds, of southern Punjab and Sindh. The especially lamentable response of Sindh’s PPP-run provincial government, which had the clearest warning of the coming spate, may prove particularly damaging to Pakistan’s ruling party. The bosses of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), formerly known as North-West Frontier Province, where the disaster began, may also be damaged. KP’s government, a coalition led by the Pushtun-nationalist Awami National Party (ANP), is actually considered to have responded halfway well. That is testament to the lessons it learned during the refugee crisis, but also to the low expectations of it. Corrupt and chaotic, it has scant control over much of its territory, especially areas contested

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between the army and a loose tribally based Islamist confederation, the Pakistani Taliban. These militants have assassinated many ANP men including, in July, the information minister’s only son. The jihadists have had a tolerably good flood, though Islamist relief workers have not been nearly as active as they were after a devastating earthquake in Kashmir in 2005, partly because the government has taken steps to prevent them. It is also because Kashmir, which is home to the main jihadist NGO, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, an offshoot of a militant outfit dedicated to fighting in India’s portion of the divided region, was relatively unflooded. With the army distracted, however, the Taliban have stolen a march. They are said to have regrouped in Mohmand, a tribal area close by the border with Afghanistan, which the army thought it had conquered. This probably lowers the chances of an attack on neighbouring North Waziristan, the main Taliban redoubt, which America has been urging Pakistan’s reluctant army to assault. Meanwhile, after a relative lull in terrorism, several Pakistan cities have suffered sectarian atrocities in recent weeks. Seventy-three people were killed in an attack on Shia Muslims in Quetta on September 3rd, as they paraded to show solidarity with the Palestinians. Of all Pakistan’s main actors, only the armed forces have emerged from the disaster strongly in credit. Bringing boats and helicopters that the civil powers lacked, they have rescued tens of thousands of stranded people and dispensed much of the government’s aid. Over 70,000 troops have been dedicated to this work. “It was the army’s duty to come in aid of the civil power,” says the army’s spokesman, Major-General Athar Abbas. “It just set to work.” Thanks goodness for that. Then again, considering that by one estimate the armed forces lay claim to a third of Pakistan’s budget, quite right too. In any event, the army has done itself no harm: burnishing an image sullied during the turbulent end to the regime of Pakistan’s last military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, who stepped aside in 2008. Army relief trucks, emblazoned with the slogan the “Pakistani army and the people are together” draw respectful glances as they surge through thronging Karachi and Lahore, capitals of Sindh and Punjab. Rumour has it they surge around in circles, twice or thrice, for maximum effect. In a country ruled by generals for much of its history, any upset invites rumours of a coup, and these are now abroad. Indeed, one of the PPP’s coalition partners, Altaf Hussain, leader of the Karachi-based Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), seemed to call for one. From London, where he lives in exile accused of many crimes in Pakistan, Mr Hussain challenged “any patriotic general” to take “martial-law-like action” against corruption. According to Punjab’s chief minister, many army officers are itching to intervene to intervene; their chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, demurs. Mr Sharif also expressed two other flood-related fears: that disaffected victims could turn to Islamist militancy, which is entrenched in southern Punjab, or that they might otherwise rise up. “If we do not do our job properly, bury the hatchet and move forward, there’s a danger that the people of this area will march to Lahore and will not spare the elite class,” he said. Pakistanis certainly have a lot to complain about. Between 2003 and 2010, by one count, nearly 31,000 were killed in jihadist-related violence, including some 10,000 civilians. Three years of economic hardship, partly because of this turmoil, have done wider damage. Economic growth has slowed, from an annual average of 7% in the mid-2000s to 4.4% last year. Many of Punjab’s crucial textiles factories, Pakistan’s industrial heights, are mothballed. Falling global demand and a dire shortage of electricity are to blame, as well as other inefficiencies that make it increasingly hard for Pakistan to compete in low-cost markets. At a Lahore gathering for Eid of old friends, all young

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professionals, half were absent, having recently emigrated to America, Europe or Dubai. And most of those present planned to follow them. Troubles in spate The suffering of poor Pakistanis is infinitely worse. Unemployment is estimated to have risen to around 15%, and inflation, currently 13%, has hardly dipped into single figures in three years. This has eroded much of the progress made on Mr Musharraf’s watch, when the proportion of Pakistanis living below the poverty line fell from 34.5% to 17%, according to the World Bank. The floods have made matters much worse. In Mianwali, a district of northern Punjab, sacks of flour were reported to be selling for triple their pre-deluge value. And those hardest hit have no money at all. They include thousands of landless peasants who built their huts on state-owned river-beds and have lost all. In Fakirabad Majoki, a village in KP’s stricken district of Charsadda beside the Jindi river, Muhammad Jamil was encamped with his wife and five children beside the rubble that was their home. The floodwater hit the village with particular ferocity, demolishing around 200 houses. Mr Jamil said he awoke at 3am as the waters surged through his front-door. He was able to save himself and his family—unlike three neighbours who drowned that night—but not their tethered buffalo or other possessions. He said they had received food donations from local well-wishers; nothing from the government. A government that leaves them floatingThis should suggest how resilient poor people, unused to government help, invariably are. And that is the main reason why Pakistan’s long misrule has not caused worse tumult. Yet it would be surprising if the jihadists could not find willing recruits among the flood-stricken horde. Theirs may be the only offer of alms or employment. Indeed, in parts of Sindh and Punjab that has long been the case. Grim prospects but no explosion Neither the government nor the generals, who control national security, seem especially disturbed by this prospect. Formerly in cahoots with the militants, who fought India at its behest, the army is less keen on them these days. It has lost over 3,000 men in its war with the Taliban; and fewer jihadists are entering Indian-controlled Kashmir. Yet it is afraid of offending conservative opinion by cracking down on the Islamists. It also fears the disorder this might cause. So where the army is not the jihadists’ target, it does not think it necessary to do much. That may explain its reluctance to assault North Waziristan, which is controlled by an Afghan jihadist (and the army’s sometime friend), Sirajuddin Haqqani. It is also why the sectarian gangs, who draw little opprobrium from Pakistan’s mainstream Urdu media, seem mostly to be beneath the army’s radar. This is bad news, which promises many more bombings of Shia processions and Ahmadi mosques. Yet there is no chance of the fundamentalists taking over Pakistan; not anytime soon. Its Islamist political parties draw little support. And the militants, divided among themselves, have even smaller followings. Nor does any popular uprising seem likely. Indeed, a more obvious danger is that Pakistanis appear increasingly loth to rally at all. The country, divided by region, sect and ethnicity, has always been a work in progress. But in its serial crises much of that work is coming undone. The murder of Ms Bhutto, shortly after she returned from her own long exile, robbed the country of its only national leader. Under the

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discredited Mr Zardari, her party has held together better than some predicted. But the poor performance of its government, exacerbated by the floods, makes its prospects grim. The same is true for the ANP. And there is no compelling alternative to these parties in Sindh or KP. The parties’ demise, if it comes, is likely to be marked by low voter turnouts and a proliferation of independents, further weakening Pakistan’s democracy. This may help the PML(N), Pakistan’s second- biggest party, whose central and urban Punjabi strongholds have largely escaped the drenching, back to power. Its leader, Nawaz Sharif, who was toppled in 1999 by Mr Musharraf, was freed by a recent constitutional amendment to become prime minister for a third time; and he is more popular than Mr Zardari. Yet his party has also been losing ground in its stronghold, Punjab, and has little support elsewhere. That would make it hard to broker the regional accords that ruling Pakistan increasingly will require. The weakening of the administration is another sort of disintegration. It was accelerated by a process of devolution introduced by Mr Musharraf, which put the district under elected mayors, not bureaucrats. That was a good idea. Pakistan is too crowded to be represented by only provincial and federal governments. Punjab alone has over 80m people. But the reform was enforced disingenuously, to ensure that Mr Musharraf’s supporters won power, and in spite of resistance from the provincial authorities whose powers it usurped. Once democracy was restored, these politicians abandoned the policy, to varying degrees, leaving Pakistan’s districts in a motley state of disarray. In KP and Baluchistan, which has an ethnically based war of its own, the district officials’ removal was believed to have allowed the insurgents in, so the civil servants have more or less been restored. In Punjab and Sindh the issue is politically contested. In Punjab Shahbaz Sharif is no friend to the babus, but dislikes the province’s former elected mayors, who were loyal to a pro-Musharraf schism in his party. In Sindh the MQM is for the reform, which gave it control of the rich cities of Karachi and Hyderabad, and the PPP is against it. These provinces’ districts are now being run by caretaker officials, with similar responsibilities to their extinct predecessors, but with less power. This has left millions of Pakistanis worse served by their government than ever. To reverse its decline, Pakistan needs better administration and devolution. It needs much better standards of education. It probably needs land reform. Most urgently it needs a semblance of political stability, without which all its governments will disappoint, plus enough economic growth to provide employment. Otherwise, as its population grows—to 335m by 2050, according to the UN’s projection—the country could get a lot more ungovernable. And climate change, a possible cause of this year’s fierce rains, may well exacerbate this. If so, it would hit Pakistan’s peasant multitude, already prone to drought and flood, especially hard. Under the army, the economy invariably perks up. But the generals cannot make Pakistan stable. Mr Musharraf’s regime was proof of that. By harassing his rivals and rewriting the constitution to legitimise his power-grab, he damaged every important institution.He sidelined Parliament, cowed the Supreme Court, kept his political rivals in exile, gutted the bureaucracy—and sullied the army’s standing. This has all contributed to today’s mess. His successor as army chief, General Kayani, does seem to understand that. He has restored the army’s reputation, in particular by reigniting the campaign against the Taliban, and he has shown no designs on power. Yet he cannot stop himself fiddling in the civil domain. He has slapped back Mr Zardari’s attempts to put the army’s spies under civilian command and to launch a less confrontational diplomacy with India. That is to Pakistan’s cost, on both counts. Moreover, though the country’s politicians may be a sorry lot, their correction is better left to the voters. An election will be held in two-and-a-half years, if the government is not derailed before then. Fingers crossed

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Statistics: private players

The Keys To The State Where do you go to find relevant government data? Private players throw the door open. Pragya Singh 13 Sep 2010, 2010 OUTLOOKINDIA

Recent Data Spats GoI revises consumption growth rates for April-June 2010 after economists point out that demand has not been properly captured. India tries to settle figures on just how many people are below the poverty line. Multiple reports say between 25-50% of population. Heated debate around a RGICS report that gave Gujarat a high score. It only considered economic and industrial performance. Indicus’s analysis that showed a rise in per capita income in Bihar was attacked on grounds that published data was not from known sources. *** When Prithvi Haldea, MBA by training and corporate executive for two decades, started his own venture in 1989—a database on the primary capital market—he didn’t know the risks involved would eventually include his life. Haldea’s other database, the one that gets him into trouble, is an online listing of “rogue” companies and their executives. It features some 34,000 individuals and 77,000 companies indicted by regulators and courts for breaking various laws. “I get death threats regularly,” he says, “even though everything I publish there is public information. I only put the people, the companies and the orders indicting them in one place, and, yes, in simple English.” Haldea’s website, incidentally, is supported by the government. “It’s ridiculous that government data should be finding its way back to the state via private

agencies.”Dr Ashish Bose, Demographer On the other hand, Ameya Sathaye only had to deal with indifference. For 10 years, Sathaye has run www.sarkaritel.com from his office-cum-residence in Delhi’s Mayur Vihar. He has two employees. One uploads the telephone numbers Sathaye gathers from government departments. The other accompanies him on “field visits”—trips to government offices in search of phone numbers. It took Sathaye years to convince officials that what he was doing—creating a free-to-use directory of state employees—was useful. It took 18 months to gather the first lists the website launched with. Things have changed since then. When the Maharashtra cabinet was reshuffled last year, Sathaye claims he had the changes up within 24 hours; the state’s own website didn’t do so for three months. “I have visited 15 countries and whenever I’ve exchanged visiting cards with Indian officials abroad, they’ve recognised my site,” says Sathaye. And to think that back in 2000, when he was struggling to launch the directory, he was often turned away at government buildings. The likes of Haldea and Sathaye represent a clutch of private stat gurus who feed the enormous hunger for information by plugging into networks of government departments, PSU executives or independent researchers who have easier access to raw data. For anyone not interested in filing RTI applications, a private database company is the easiest way to plug into India. Even the government, the source of all this data, is often a subscriber for these stats, buying it right back from private companies.

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“They often add value, or help in interpreting data, which the state can’t do...but can it be free of

ideology?”Pronab Sen, Planning Commission The market is an obvious one: foreign and domestic investors, research agencies, universities, analysts and development agencies clamour for information on how much to invest, where and how. On whether the rural market is doing as well as the news reports proclaim, or on whether there could be a bigger market for, say, shampoo, in smaller towns. These private organisers of data have filled up the information gap by taking over the job of a state that has barely kept up. While most people seem happy with this arrangement, it has also led to controversies on the interpretation of data. Some companies provide the data for free. For others, the price covers the effort it takes to access and collate official public records. Other times, databases break dense officialese into digestible parts. But mostly, the fee covers the much bigger price of returning disappointed from understocked official data counters. Sathaye admits that all the information on his site is available, free, on the government departments’ websites as well. He’s just a “central source”, he says, “after all, many departments still don’t update their own directories before many days...sometimes a month”. Government officials use Sathaye’s website regularly to search for colleagues in other departments. In fact, his biggest advertisers are 40 state-run companies. Getting hold of official statistics is less difficult now than a decade ago. But it’s still not easy. Noted demographer Dr Ashish Bose, who headed the population research centre at the Institute of Economic Growth, says, “I was looking for some data on population, and I knew the website of the Registrar General of India had it. But the site was under maintenance for days together. Finally, I asked my assistant, who got it in no time from one of the private sources.” IndiaStat.com, an online subscription-based database of nearly any official statistic on India, from the administrative set-up to banking, housing, crime, industry, labour and sports (including the Commonwealth Games), is one such source of official statistics. As a young economist in Uttar Pradesh during the 1980s, Dr R.K. Thukral, who runs the site, published some of the earliest statistical ‘handbooks’ on the state. The internet gave him a chance at entrepreneurship; he moved his interest in numbers online. “I’m trying to collect data on India from independence to now,” says Thukral. “But it’s very difficult.” Most of this information will go into the new websites he is planning, one, a socio-economic profile of India, another dedicated to the Constitution, and urban and local governance. But even Dr Thukral, with his years of experience, sees challenges ahead. A small instance—India uses EVMs, but booth-level data on voting patterns is not freely available, except with the leaders of a parliamentary constituency. Still, things are not all bad. Last time he looked, the President of India’s office was a subscriber to his database, as is the Planning Commission and several state governments. Recently, the Congress Working Committee has become a member. “We’ve had no complaints yet—all the data we provide is official statistics, all of it. Though we do add value by simplifying raw statistics into tables and charts that can be used by different users,” says Thukral. He has 51 employees running the show, including field staff in major cities. “You could say that the government is our competitor,” he says.

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“We do sometimes have problems with private firms, especially when sources are not reported

properly.”T.C.A. Anant, Chief Statistician The government, on its part, says once it releases data into the public domain, it can’t really control who uses it. Pronab Sen, ex-secretary, statistics and programme implementation, who recently joined the Planning Commission as advisor, says, “As long as the data is not tampered with, and then said to be the official version, there’s nothing wrong with private firms distributing or reselling it. They often add value, or help in interpreting data, which the state can’t do...but interpretation cannot be free of ideology.” At times, though, government data is ‘interpreted’ by the private sector in a user-friendly way. This interpretation isn’t risk-free, says Jatin Singh, who runs SkyMet, a weather report-and-forecast business, out of Noida. “In fact, it’s riskier,” he says. SkyMet uses the Indian Met department’s data, which is public, and employs a handful of ex-IAF officers, who offer prediction services to TV channels, publications, and telecom, oil and aviation firms. “The Met department does the same, I just narrow down the forecast. But if I get it wrong, I don’t get paid. That’s the risk I take,” says Jatin. Percentage Players Non-state players who are crunching numbers with state data

Watchoutinvestors.com Set up in 2004 by Prithvi Haldea, online listing of “rogue” companies and their executives Employees: 35 Subscribers: Site is free to access by all Wishlist: That the UID gets under way, allowing a clear listing of names

SarkariTel.com Set up in 1999 by Ameya Sathaye, this is a free-to-use directory of government employees Employees: 2, plus a few stringers Subscribers: Site is free-to-access by all Wishlist: Listings of block, village data

indiaStat.com Started in 1999 by R.K. Thukral, online subscription-based database of official statistics of India Employees: 50 approx Subscribers: GoI agencies, political parties, research groups. Wishlist: All demographic data since 1947

SkyMet Set up by Jatin Singh in 2003, weather report-and-forecast business out of Noida Employees: 40 approx Subscribers: Telecom, aviation companies, research bodies

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Wishlist: That all the Met Dept weather sensors actually start working

Indicus Analytics Started in 2000 by Laveesh Bhandari, it’s an economic research firm that produces economic, consumer data products Subscribers: National and international corporate bodies, industry associations, governments, academia, media houses

CMIE Started in 1976 by Mahesh Vyas, subscription-based database of Indian companies, economy and finance. Conducts research and produces database products. Employees: 330 approx Subscribers: Thousands of organisations in India and overseas

But it isn’t just that—the risk in putting out information is also that you may upset someone, whether or not it is political (such as GDP data that the government recently revised under pressure). “We do have problems with private agencies from time to time, especially when sources aren’t reported properly,” says T.C.A. Anant, India’s chief statistician. “There’s not much we can do about it...the government can’t cater to everyone’s information needs individually. It’s also for buyers of data to be wary,” he says. Still, what’s deeply ironic is that the government agencies buy back, at times, their own data. Dr Bose offers everyone a way out: “It’s ridiculous that government data should be finding its way back into government via private agencies.” He suggests that the government make out a simple list of which department is responsible for releasing what data. Though, who knows, this could take years—unless outsourced.

Asia

Midlevel Universities Look Into India Branches

By VIR SINGH September 12, 2010 The New York Times NEW DELHI — When the Indian education minister spoke last autumn of inviting overseas education providers to set up campuses in the country, he mentioned the likes of Harvard, Yale and Oxford. But six months after India’s top ministerial body approved a draft law to open the country to foreign education institutions, it is clear that the world’s top universities are not ready to plunge into the vast higher-education market in India. Instead, the proposal before lawmakers is more likely to attract midlevel schools — still far superior to the average Indian education provider — while excluding fly-by-night operators, according to

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educators who have advised the Human Resource Development Ministry, which oversees education. “There is a high level of interest only from the Tier 2 institutions to do things in a serious manner,” said M. Anandakrishnan, chairman of one of the branches of the government-financed Indian Institute of Technology, or IIT. Some of the names in this category are the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Virginia Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the Schulich School of Business in Toronto. The so-called Tier 1 institutions “are simply not interested in setting up a campus here,” Mr. Anandakrishnan said. Georgia Tech says it is planning to set up a research facility in the southern city of Hyderabad in partnership with Infosys Technologies. According to a statement, the university hopes the passage of the proposed legislation will allow it to start offering master’s and doctoral degrees in India. Carnegie Mellon University is helping the northern state of Punjab to plan courses at a new university, while Virginia Tech and Schulich have lined up Indian partners and have announced plans for new campuses near Chennai and in Hyderabad, respectively. While a final vote by Parliament on the legislation has yet to be scheduled, colleges are already making plans, anticipating they will find an eager and substantial audience, consultants say. “Fundamentally, it is a big education market,” said H.V. Harish, who is advising education providers about how to enter India. “There are people who spend money. The target market for these types of universities is people who can afford an overseas education but do not want to send their kids overseas. People from business families.” The market does not end there, say some of the midlevel colleges and universities that have already entered India through partnerships with Indian universities. The British University of Wolverhampton, for instance, is reaching out to working professionals — junior to midlevel managers who have a few years of experience. It plans to teach business courses through its Indian partner, Bishop Heber College, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and is happy with this arrangement. “I think the Indian government now is more receptive to foreign universities’ setting up in India,” said Jo Gittens, director of the university’s International Office. “We don’t have any overseas campuses. It’s something we haven’t taken up as a strategy because we feel we have good-enough partnerships.” But, she added, “it’s certainly not out of the question.” The Schulich School of Business also started out with an Indian partner. In January of this year, it started a joint master of business administration degree program with Mumbai’s S.P. Jain Institute of Management Research. But even as it began this partnership, it was in advanced talks with the GMR Group, a consortium of mostly infrastructure companies, to set up an independent campus in Hyderabad. Ashwin W. Joshi, executive director of the Schulich M.B.A. Program in India, says there is strong demand in India for a top-quality M.B.A. program, which the school plans to start offering by 2013. “There are people who are incredibly bright and people who can pay,” he said. Mr. Joshi believes there are “tens of thousands” of people who can pay the more than $24,000 in annual tuition fees

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that international students pay when they go to Schulich.“I don’t have any doubt that there will be any shortage of demand at these price points.” He could be right. The privately run Indian School of Business, also in Hyderabad, charges $35,000. While there may be a large market, the bill now before lawmakers prohibits repatriation of profits. Furthermore, those wanting to set up campuses must deposit more than $10.5 million with the government. The proposed law also requires that institutions have at least 20 years of teaching experience in their home countries. Officials will have the power to exempt applicants from some conditions, but not the one banning providers from taking profits out of India. “Genuinely good institutions are not interested in taking out profits,” said Pawan Agarwal, a former education ministry official. “They want a global footprint.” That is what several midlevel entrants have in mind as they size up their prospects in India. Institutions that have firmed up plans to start or expand operations in India say that while they may not see profits for years, having a presence in India — no matter how small — helps to draw students. Glenn Withers, president of Universities Australia, a group that represents 39 institutions, said, “An overseas campus is a better option to internationalize education for Australian students.” Ms. Gittens of the University of Wolverhampton agrees. Partnerships “are not just about joint delivery — they are about internationalizing our staff,” she said. Although India’s government now does not see the Ivy League rushing to enter the Indian market, officials at some Ivy League schools have confirmed plans to increase their presence, no matter how small. Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, has decided to open an office in India, either in New Delhi or in Mumbai. “This is something we’ve just decided on,” said Matthew Gutmann, Brown’s vice president for international affairs, during an interview after leading a mission to India in April. Earlier this year, Columbia University in New York opened its fourth global center for research and regional collaboration in Mumbai, even though it does not have plans to open a separate campus in India. “We’ve created a center that’s independent of any joint degree program,” said Kenneth Prewitt, Columbia’s vice president for global centers. However, the university’s experience suggests that an initial step like this one might lead to joint degree programs, he said, adding it was a possibility that the same could happen in India. This is what Education Minister Kapil Sibal and other backers of the draft law have learnedand are now emphasizing as it awaits parliamentary action. After the initial talk about the impending arrival of the Ivies — Mr. Sibal is a Harvard Law School graduate — “he is beginning to realize that it is not going to happen all of a sudden,” Mr. Agarwal said Space crunch Rapid business growth

Room In The Sky Defence airspace to be freed for dual use

Amba Batra Bakshi

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Sep 12, 2010 OUTLOOKINDIA

Given the enormous growth in air traffic in India over the last five years, and with projections indicating the same trend, the concern is not just about having bigger aircraft fleets and related infrastructure. Something far more basic—having additional airspace—needs to be worked out. So some of the airspace that’s now with the defence forces—which control some 30 per cent of total Indian airspace—may soon be made available for civilian aircraft. Sources in the civil aviation ministry said the opening up of airspace for dual and/or flexible use could happen as early as December 2011. Discussions are on between the civil aviation and the defence ministries on what combinations could work. This has been accorded top priority as there has been rapid growth in civilian air traffic since the opening up of the economy. According to aviation experts, there are advantages to sharing airspace. “Since defence controls so much of our airspace, it prevents straight flight paths, particularly on the routes between the north and the west. So opening of the defence airspace will help. Also, choice of optimal routes for commercial aircraft is currently restricted. Traffic jams in the sky lead to increase in flying time, additional fuel consumption, increase in maintenance costs, employee overtime, unsatisfactory on-time performance and inconvenience to the travelling public,” says Jyoti Rautela, a research analyst with Aviation Watch, published by the Infrastructure Power & Petroleum Association of India (IPPAI). In 2004, the Naresh Chandra committee on civil aviation had asked the government “to consider the model followed in the US and many other countries, wherein airspace is permanently made available for civil aviation and segments of airspace are re-vested and made available to defence on request.” Also, to facilitate effective coordination in the use of airspace and for code-sharing, civil and defence atcs may be unified or otherwise integrated wherever feasible (a practice that is on in Brazil).” Recent figures from the ministry of civil aviation and the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) show traffic growth in India remained in double digits last month, with traffic now reaching well above pre-recession levels. The average growth rate this year was nearly 21 per cent. Meanwhile, the stability in the sector has improved, say experts, as continued passenger growth combines with a pick-up in business class travel—and hence yields. Last month, there were about 45.7 lakh domestic air passengers, up from 37.6 lakh who took flights in June 2009. Between January and June this year, 257.1 lakh people flew within the country—22 per cent higher than last year’s figure of 211 lakh. Other efforts that are being made to accommodate the projected growth are the proposed low-cost terminals at airports across the country. Delhi airport is said to have plans to open one soon. At these terminals, airport charges will be lower than at the other terminals. In Karnataka, the government has already sanctioned Rs 40 crore for the development of four no-frills, low-cost airports across the state. Also, three greenfield airports are being set up in the northeastern states to improve air connectivity. India will also get its modern air traffic system by the end of 2011. The centralised monitoring system based in New Delhi will coordinate between different air regions in the country and also help lower the risk of mishaps.

COVER STORY

Poisoned ground

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Hindustan Unilever is avoiding its responsibilities to its workers exposed to mercury in the

thermometer factory it owned in Kodaikanal.

SARAH HIDDLESTON Sep. 11-24, 2010 FRONTLINE IT was when the men in moon suits arrived that it really sank in. There they were, with breathing apparatus and impermeable all-in-ones, gingerly taking away the material that had been sitting for five years in an open-air scrapyard in the middle of the busiest part of town. Vegetables and meat had been sold around it, children and devotees of the neighbouring mosque and church had walked daily just metres from what was being treated like a ticking bomb. It was glass from the factory at the top of the town's forest-lined ridge, which produced nearly 10 million thermometers 1 a year for export to the West without a puff of black smoke in the sky. And it was being taken away using technical gadgets by a crack decontamination team for special disposal by experts in the United States of America. It was so dangerous that the soil beneath it was going too. The glass was edged with a poison – mercury. Mercury that looked so harmless and clean and silvery. Mercury that doctors used in instruments in their clinics. Mercury that had laced the bodies of homebound factory workers. Was that why the trees were withering near the factory site? Was that why factory workers would get dizzy and ill often? Was that why 23 of them died, most in their early 30s? These questions and more were on the lips of townspeople in Kodaikanal, a hill station retreat set almost 2,200 metres high in the flourishing forests of the Western Ghats of Tamil Nadu. It was 2003, and that year mercury-contaminated waste weighing almost 300 tonnes was extracted from the town. It could not be ignored. At that moment, the public eye in Tamil Nadu and beyond was focussed on the thermometer factory. The news was reported 2 of how in 2001 the Palani Hills Conservation Council and Greenpeace had caught the management selling mercury-contaminated glass to a local scrap dealer and how, faced with the evidence, the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board had asked the 18-year-old operation to close. The moment passed with much left unquestioned and unanswered, and much more cleaning to be done. Nine years after the factory was closed, Frontline shows that the land lies polluted and the workers have grounds to fear mercury poisoning. Frontline unravels how a global corporation took advantage of lax laws in a developing country to run a second-hand plant full of ageing equipment that compromised on safety. We reveal how the company is denying its responsibilities to employees and the environment by relying on questionable scientific studies it commissioned or conducted itself and by withholding employees' medical records. We detail who was involved, who was ignored, and the abject failure of regulatory authorities in the State to do anything to bring the company to heel. The company is Hindustan Unilever, the Indian subsidiary 52 per cent of which is owned by the Anglo-Dutch giant Unilever. Responding to Frontline, it admits to polluting the factory grounds but denies all other allegations. Tainted lives

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R. Vijaylakshmi 3 said it happened after three months of work at the mercury thermometer factory when she was just 21. The giddiness, the stomach pain, blood in her urine. But she needed the Rs.135. So even though her husband's friend, a doctor, asked her not to go back to work, she went anyway. “I was strong, like twice your body. Now I am like this. Sick, diseased, and consuming medicines all the time. I had a tumour in my uterus…. I am just 38 years of age. …I had a miscarriage just two months ago… I get periods twice every month…,” she said while fixing coffee in her tiny house just 200 metres from the factory. Vijaylakshmi worked for five years as a temporary worker. She is one of more than 550 men and women who claim that their work at Hindustan Unilever's Kodaikanal factory caused irreparable damage to their health. 4 They say that since the factory opened, 23 of their colleagues have died young, 5 and that their causes of death reveal complications resulting from mercury exposure: lung problems, heart problems, and kidney failure. 6 Today most of the workers still in Kodaikanal report varying symptoms. These include headache, skin problems, eye problems, chest pain, dental problems, nose bleed, vomiting, blooded urine, breathing problems, impotency, irregular menstruation, miscarriage, giddiness, tremors, and inability to grip effectively. “These symptoms are classic symptoms of occupational mercury poisoning,” Dr Linda Jones of Massey University commented over the telephone from New Zealand. 7 Dr Jones is an expert in neurobehavioural assessment in mercury poisoning, tremor assessment, and critical health psychology. Her study of the effect of mercury on dental nurses is one of just two 30-year studies in the world mapping the effect of mercury as an occupational hazard. A quarter of the women Dr Jones has studied needed a hysterectomy at an early age in a country where a rate of 6 per cent is normal. Of the 43 women that the company says worked at the factory, 21 complain of irregular periods, uterus or menstrual problems – almost half. 8 “Mercury,” Dr Jones says, “is the third most toxic element in the world after arsenic and lead.” What would have put workers most at risk was vapour from ordinary liquid mercury, which is what the factory used in its thermometers. At room temperature, mercury gives off vapour the whole time at low levels. But the more it is heated, the more vapour it gives off, she says. “Mercury vapour,” Dr Jones explains, “gets absorbed through the mucous membrane [when you breathe], gets into the blood stream, and goes straight into the brain.” According to the United States Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry's Toxicological Profile for Mercury, “mercury vapours… may affect many different areas of the brain and their associated functions.” Short-term exposure, it says, can damage the lining of the mouth and lungs, causing tightness of breath. Other effects include kidney failure, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, high blood pressure, skin rashes, and eye irritation. 9 In Hindustan Unilever's study of 255 employees, former employees, and some contract workers shortly after the factory was closed in March 2001, company doctors found 78 workers had symptoms of nervous system disorder, 29 had cardiovascular problems, 16 gastrointestinal problems and seven genito-urinary problems. Four of them had tremors and two had seizures. Some 87 people had dental caries and 24 had gum inflammation. 10 But the company dismissed these symptoms as having nothing to do with mercury exposure. It paid the workers a small severance package of three months plus a bonus, which is required by law when a factory closes under normal circumstances. 11 This was hardly normal closure.

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Struggling to make ends meet with their health bills, the workers have banded together to form the 559-strong Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association. Their president, S.A. Mahindran, filed a Public Interest Litigation suit in the Madras High Court. The association wants an economic rehabilitation scheme and a healthcare treatment and monitoring programme at the company's expense for everyone who ever worked in the factory. It also wants the company prosecuted. 12 Hindustan Unilever denies that any of the health problems of the workers or their families was the result of mercury exposure in the factory. 13 Four years after the case was filed and nine years after the factory was closed, the workers are still fighting for compensation. The last court hearing was in June 2008. Poisoned ground The levels of mercury to which workers were exposed are clear from the extent of pollution found on the thermometer factory site and beyond. The factory is not any old plot of land. It sits at the top of a ridge overlooking one of three of Kodaikanal's Shola forests, dense thickets and grasslands that are now a reserve forest protected by the Tamil Nadu Forest Department. “This is one of the 10 most important biodiversity spots in the world,” says Rajesh Mani from Greenearth Trust. 14 “The Pambar Shola has over 30 plant species endemic to the forest.” R. VIJAYLAKSHMI, WHO was a temporary worker in the factory, on a visit to a dentist. "I was strong, like twice your body. Now I am like this. Sick, diseased, and consuming medicines all the time. I had a tumour in my uterus.. I am just 38 years of age." Nestled in the forest greenery, the 85,000 square metre 15 plot on St. Mary's Road looks innocuous. But over 28,000 kilos 16 of partially treated mercury sludge from the site was hauled out and sent back to the U.S. by the expert decontamination team in 2003. Today over 360 kilos of mercury remain spread over the site, Hindustan Unilever admits. 17 A 25 square metre area south of the factory had eight kilos of mercury in the soil. 18 These figures are high for mercury, where pollution levels are measured by the milligram. Studies in Sweden cited by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Global Mercury Partnership suggest that accumulated mercury in organic forest soils reduces microbial activity, affecting the base of the food chain on land. 19 “The Shola forest is one of the most intricate things,” observed Shekar Dattatri, documentary film-maker, at a meeting in Chennai in March this year. 20 “You need the soil bacteria, the termites, the fungi to keep the forest alive. Our forests have already shrunk. We can't compromise on what is left now.” The factory management cannot account for 1.3 tonnes of mercury at all. 21 Environmentalists and workers argue this is a gross underestimate. K. Gopalakrishnan, who worked in the accounts section of the factory, went through various reports on contamination levels submitted by Hindustan Unilever's consultants. He saw discrepancies in the arithmetic, particularly in the amounts of mercury each thermometer contained, so he reworked the calculations. He estimated that over 17 tonnes of mercury have escaped. 22 What townspeople and environmentalists fear is that the factory's mercury will convert into an even more dangerous form, methylmercury. This happens when mercury is worked on by bacteria in the environment, and when taken up by plants or the fish in water, moves into the food chain.

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Methylmercury poisoning made news headlines in the mid-1950s after pollution from a mercury-chloride factory entered the sea in Minamata in Japan. Hundreds of people were poisoned by eating contaminated fish caught in the area. Some were paralysed, some went mad, some died. Parts of Kodaikanal's thermometer factory have concentrations of over 500 parts per million (ppm) of mercury in the soil. 23 According to the Japanese Public Health Association, if concentration levels exceed just 1 ppm, there is a risk of contaminating the water. 24 Only a few surface runoff water samples were taken from the site. But two of them, collected after a heavy storm, showed that rainfall was washing mercury-contaminated soil into water as silt. 25 Dr Masaru Tanaka heads the UNEP Global Mercury Partnership Waste Management Area and advises the Japanese government on waste management. Responding from Japan to Frontline's questions over email, 26 he quoted the partnership's 2002 assessment of the dangers of finding mercury attached to suspended soil: “Mercury has a long retention time in soil and as a result, the mercury accumulated in soil may continue to be released to surface waters and other media for long periods of time, possibly hundreds of years.” Only limited samples from outside the factory have been tested by Hindustan Unilever's consultant. But the data it collected are enough cause for concern: samples from bark and moss, which pick up pollution in air, showed concentrations per kilo of up to 68 milligrams of mercury north of the factory and up to 80 milligrams to the south. 27 Dr Mark Chernaik, a scientist with the U.S.-based Environmental Law Alliance, whose opinions have been relied upon by the Supreme Courts of India and Pakistan and the European Court of Human Rights, reviewed the test results at the request of the workers. 28 He noted that surface water samples taken from the Kodai lake and parts of the Pambar stream had mercury readings 30 times higher than what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends for fresh water containing fish that humans consume. Worse, detectable levels of the more lethal methylmercury were found in three local lakes by a group of scientists from India's Department of Atomic Energy and Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad. 29 Their findings, which were published in the journal Environmental Pollution in 2006, showed that half of all mercury levels detected in fish was methylmercury. In Japan no detectable levels of methylmercury are acceptable at all, Dr Tanaka confirmed. 30 Responding to our questions, Hindustan Unilever points to its own consultant's studies showing mercury concentrations in the stream and lake are low overall. Today Hindustan Unilever has persuaded the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) that its responsibilities are limited to cleaning the factory site and no further. It also maintains that it need only clean those areas where soil concentrations are higher than 25 milligrams a kg, based on the land being used for residential housing in the future. 31 That is 25 times the level acceptable in Britain, according to the U.K. Environment Agency soil guideline values. 32 And 2.5 times the level acceptable in the Netherlands, according to its own consultant. 33 This does not even address the question of what levels might be necessary to protect a rare forest. Unilever's environment policy, which is displayed on its website, expressly states that it will “exercise the same concern for the environment wherever we operate”. 34 Hindustan Unilever failed to acknowledge this policy in response to our questions and maintained it was conducting soil cleaning as approved by the TNPCB. It maintained that the “intervention” standards set in Britain and the Netherlands are different from clean-up standards. It claimed that the Dutch intervention value was raised in 2006 to 36 milligrams a kg and pointed to the lack of standards in India.

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Compromised safety The fact is that the mercury thermometer factory was relocated to India because it was too dangerous to run in the West. Machines in the factory, which Unilever inherited with the purchase of Chesebrough-Ponds in 1986, 35 were hand-me-downs brought to India three years earlier from a Ponds' unit in Watertown, New York. Legislation on mercury handling in the U.S. had begun to change after toxic side effects began to be publicised. 36 India, where Ponds had a subsidiary, had no such problem with mercury as long as drinking water was not affected. 37 Residents and workers say standards in the Kodaikanal factory began to deteriorate from 1987, when managerial staff brought by Ponds from the U.S. left India following Unilever's acquisition. 38 Ironically for Hindustan Unilever and its parent company, new laws were adopted in India around the same time in the wake of the Bhopal gas calamity of December 2-3, 1984: the Environment (Protection) Act 1986, hazardous process amendments to the Factories Act 1987, and Hazardous Waste Rules 1989. Did the factory comply with the new legal requirements? Workers have told the Madras High Court that Hindustan Unilever failed to inform workers how dangerous mercury really was; failed to provide proper personal protective equipment, including special NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, in the U.S.) carbon cartridge masks to filter vapours; and failed to separate out the dangerous mercury area from the non-mercury area. 39 Material examined in this investigation confirms some of their allegations. In the appointment letters, training evaluation and standing orders placed before the Madras High Court by Hindustan Unilever, none mentions the dangers of mercury or the precautions necessary. 40 Recent disclosures of equipment obtained under the Right to Information Act from the Commissioner of Central Excise, Tamil Nadu, show that special filter masks were neither imported nor bought from the domestic market. 41 According to former workers, even the coveralls and soft cloth gloves that were provided were often removed – it was hot and they were keen to prevent the thermometers slipping out of their hands so as to meet the production target of 75,000 thermometers a day. Factory layout diagrams 42 show high-risk mercury sections were right next to the washing and packing area, and vapours from the manufacturing process and accidental breakages could move between the two designated areas, affecting temporary workers. 43 They were not given protective clothing, just a cotton overall and a cap. S. Amulu washed mercury-laden uniforms by hand, unprotected. 44 Gardeners tended to the plants unprotected, while the factory's 25 exhausts blew out toxic vapour. 45 Spot assessments of mercury levels seen by the Indian People's Tribunal on Environment and Health in 2002 show vapour levels were recorded at over four times the level at which mercury affects the central nervous system (0.1 milligram per cubic metre). 46 This is almost 10 times the 0.05 milligram per cubic metre for a 40-hour working week required by the Tamil Nadu government. That does not account for the overtime that workers say they regularly put in. In 1992, the total year average exceeded 0.05 mg/m3, according to Hindustan Unilever's own consultant's report. 47 The company told Frontline that the factory followed laid-down procedures when mercury levels in air were exceeded.

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But the company failed to inform the authorities when things got dangerous, including reporting these mercury vapour levels. The Accidents Register and the Dangerous Occurrences Register record only one cut finger and a fire. No mention is made of the lack of water after drought conditions hit Tamil Nadu in 1989. 48 Workers were required to wash before leaving to remove the mercury vapours that would have settled on their hair and skin. But from 1989 they were sent home unwashed, they have told the Madras High Court. 49 Hindustan Unilever denies these allegations and maintains that it had “comprehensive occupational health and safety systems… including employee training and awareness, use of personal protective equipment and adherence to safety procedures.” The company, contrary to its claims, also failed to dispose of its waste properly. Instead, Hindustan Unilever buried it or kept it in unused buildings. The company's own consultant's report details how around 45 tonnes of glass scrap from the purported non-mercury area was buried in four shallow pits onsite. It says that contaminated glass from the mercury area was packed untreated in drums and kept festering in its old bakery. 50 In 1990, a mercury recovery system was introduced. But by the company's own admission, it was inefficient and left a glass sludge less tainted but nevertheless contaminated. 51 It then broke down. 52 In 1999 a new system was introduced that was better but not at all foolproof, the consultant's report concedes. 53 In fact, the company did not have permission to store so much waste onsite. From August 1994, consent to the company was limited by the regulators to 1,200 kilos of treated mercury sludge a year. But the fine print in the consent form stated that a factory can only hold waste exceeding 10,000 kg for 90 days. 54 But over 28,000 kg were sent back to the U.S. in 2003. 55 Questionable assessments Post-shutdown, Hindustan Unilever has avoided independent assessment. Instead, it has relied on questionable scientific studies it commissioned or conducted itself. S.A. MAHINDRAN, president of the Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association. "The soil is polluted, the walls are polluted, but the people who work there are not polluted how?" he asks. The contamination and risk assessment study was undertaken by the Singapore-based company URS Dames and Moore and commissioned and paid for by its client Hindustan Unilever. 56 In this exercise, Hindustan Unilever was able to involve itself in the collection and analysis of data. More than two-thirds of all the samples taken from the site were collected by Hindustan Unilever and taken for analysis in its own laboratories in Mumbai. 57 Significantly, the samples the company was responsible for analysing were from some of the worst-contaminated areas such as the bakery building, where untreated mercury glass scrap had been left. 58 More importantly, Hindustan Unilever's Mumbai labs were ill-equipped to deal with the task in hand, as Dames and Moore acknowledges. 59 Just how far is evident from the manifold differences in the results reported in certain samples, detailed in a table at the back of the consultant's report. 60 This risk assessment study failed to undertake important hydrological studies determining movement of pollutants through groundwater, which may move in a different direction from surface water. 61 In a place like Kodaikanal, which sits on a rock massif, this would be important. According to Dr Tanaka, soil sampling has a specific technique based on a grid system: at each point samples should be taken from the surface and at a 50 cm depth, mixed, divided, and then weighed. 62 There is no evidence that such assessment took place. The Indian People's Tribunal notes that offsite sampling in this case was patchy, unorganised, and “insufficient to indicate that

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the report presents a proper environmental assessment.” 63 Methylmercury assessments were made from surface samples, but bottom samples would have been more appropriate, according to specifications suggested by the Japanese Public Health Association's 2001 report. 64 No account has been given of why particular samples on and offsite were singled out for methylmercury testing. “The soil is polluted, the walls are polluted, but the people who worked there are not polluted – how?” asked Mahindran, incredulous at the company's refusal to acknowledge health complaints from hundreds of workers. 65 Just as it did with the environment study, Hindustan Unilever avoided independent investigation of workers' health. After the factory was closed, its medical and occupational health vice president, Dr T. Rajagopal, undertook a study of around 250 employees and ex-employees, found that they had a considerable number of health symptoms, and dismissed these. That study was published in the Indian Journal of Occupational Health and Environmental Medicine, of which Dr Rajagopal is on the editorial advisory board. 66 Shockingly, the article appeared without declaration of conflict of interest. Nor was the fact that the population in question was drawn from the company's own workforce disclosed. In this manner, the company gave the workers and itself a clean bill of health. Faced with a court case, the company turned to doctors from the Indian Toxicological Research Centre (ITRC), the National Institute of Occupational Health, and the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences to review their study. 67 Not one of them had access to complete sets of individual medical records; nor did they meet any of the workers. Their opinions were favourable to the company that approached them. The Madras High Court did not let this questionable procedure go unnoticed. The Bench was in the process of considering who to ask for an independent review and disapproved of the company jumping the gun. 68 The court eventually ordered that an expert committee of doctors should visit Kodaikanal to find out whether the workers' health problems were “relatable to mercury exposure”. The answer that came back – “not specific only to mercury exposure” – was not to the question asked. 69 Not one of the doctors was a neurologist, who according to the Japanese Public Health Association is the only specialist qualified to assess symptoms of brain damage. 70 The team was headed by Dr A.K. Srivastava – the same doctor from the ITRC who had already submitted his opinion supporting Hindustan Unilever's case. The doctors' team saw 20 of the close to 200 workers and their families lined up outside their room, selected at the last minute by the workers themselves. The tests the committee used do not match up to those Dr Jones uses, such as a tweezer dexterity test and a peg placement test. 71 There also appears to have been an unaccounted for change in the brief. The Madras High Court had instructed the committee to undertake a comprehensive review, with an epidemiological study. But according to Dr Jayaprakash Muliyil, a community health specialist on the committee, it undertook a rapid assessment to see “if there was evidence for a study.” 72 Dr Muliyil also clarified that although he could not say whether any of the workers suffer specifically from mercury poisoning, it was not possible to rule it out either. In fact, he feels it is “highly likely” that they are. 73 The Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association has contended before the High Court that the expert committee failed to hold an independent inquiry and resorted to incomplete examination, predetermined opinion, abdication of the duty placed on it by the court, flawed science, and erroneous conclusions. 74

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It has also charged the company in court with not being truthful in its submissions to the expert committee. Information collected by workers reveals that medical records denied to them were supplied to the committee for certain workers, particularly for women. Eighteen of them hold letters from the company informing them that their medical records do not exist. 75 Hindustan Unilever's explanation to Frontline is that women's readings on record are averages based around the group mean. Crucially, 306 workers were denied access to their own medical health records. 76 This is significant not just because workers have been denied what is their right, but also because Hindustan Unilever has relied on these data to defend itself. Reports viewed by us from the company, the doctors who reviewed their study, and the court-appointed expert committee all state that workers' symptoms did not match up with test results in their medical records showing ‘safe' levels of mercury in urine. Therefore, they surmise, their symptoms must be attributable to some other problem. 77 They also maintain that because mercury passes through the body quickly, it is now too late to know for sure if workers are poisoned. But these assumptions display just how little expertise has been brought to bear on the issue. RUBY MARTIN AT the grave of her son, Christopher, who worked in the factory for six years from 1985. In 1990, aged 27, he developed health problems, including poor vision, high fever and breathing difficulties. A doctor he consulted in Tiruchi advised him to work outside the mercury area. He resigned a few months after the company refused to transfer him citing difficulty in training a person to take his place without production being affected. Christopher died in 1997. His health records showed bronchitis but the workers' union suspects that mercury vapour was the cause. “In my opinion,” Dr Jones explains, “if any one individual is exposed, it's important to look at symptoms. In a population study they are always going to use an indicator like urine for elemental mercury and say if they have 40 or 50 micrograms of mercury per litre, which is the standard international cut-off value for mercury in urine, then there's no worry. But actually a person can have five [micrograms] or fewer and still have symptoms [of poisoning] because of this individual variation.” 78 Limits for mercury in urine and blood are “a bit of a problem,” she says, because it is not possible to tell whether the mercury reading represents what is being stored in the body or passing out of it. When it comes to determining and treating mercury poisoning, Dr Jones is clear: “What you really need to be doing is assessing the symptoms, mood, tremor, gait, sometimes personality change and cultural withdrawal.” 79 She also suggests that epidemiological methods such as those used in Hindustan Unilever's study were likely to hide the clinical cases, the people who were really sick, because they focussed around the average levels of a group of people. 80 The individual data that some workers managed to get from Hindustan Unilever show one-off readings at extreme levels between 100 and 200 micrograms. 81 Of the 152 medical reports received, 98 workers had readings exceeding 50 micrograms, the Madras High Court has heard. The Indian government has not laid down safe levels for mercury in blood or urine, but these readings are two to four times what is internationally acceptable. 82 “Those are huge readings,” comments Dr Jones. “When you are talking about numbers like 100 that is not a level that's acceptable.” 83 It is not too late to track poisoning either, she adds: “For the group of women that I am following at the moment, it's 30 years since their exposure…. So 10 years is nothing.” 84

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Evasion & regulatory failure Hindustan Unilever, and Ponds before it, took advantage of the insensitivity of the law and the lack of critical examination by regulators. The regulators failed to do their duty even under the prevalent law. The factory was given permission to set up in Kodaikanal on shaky grounds to begin with. The Ponds India management got special permission from the Central government to set up on the grounds that it was a non-polluting glass manufacturing unit. 85 No formal site selection or screening process was undertaken to assess and minimise the impact of a mercury thermometer plant in an eco-sensitive area. When Hindustan Unilever took over, the same kind of evasion continued. It failed to declare its Kodaikanal factory to the Factories Inspectorate as a dangerous operation, even though glass-manufacturing units were listed as such in law after the December 1984 calamity at Bhopal. 86 In 2000, the factory declared itself dangerous in its renewal licence but not in its 2001 annual report. 87 Today the company maintains that factory operations “did not fall in the scope of dangerous operation under the Factories Act”. If this was the case, why would the company have needed to obtain certificates of fitness for some employees? And why would it have bothered to include three of these, from 1986, 1998, and 1999, to defend itself before the Court? 88 The Tamil Nadu government authorities were hardly sensitive to the hazards present in the thermometer manufacturing process. The Tamil Nadu Factories Inspectorate kept minimal data on the company's operations, as records produced before the court reveal. 89 In 1995, the Chief Inspector of Factories noted new buildings had been built without sanction, but this was only spotted because the company applied to the inspectorate to remove them. 90 In 1998, Dr W.R.S. Thangasamy, Certifying Surgeon of the Factories Inspectorate, visited the factory. He concluded that “no workers were found to be working in direct contact with mercury and there is no chance for mercury poisoning,” without mentioning medical tests or reports. 91 After the factory closed, the Deputy Inspector of Factories, Sivakasi, examined 75 workers, their medical histories, and any past test reports in seven hours (excluding lunch). 92 That is a rate of one worker every five minutes. Nor did the Pollution Control Board fare much better. Records of a visit to the Kodaikanal factory in March 1999 show random air-monitoring samples were taken but not from all emission points. No sample was taken for mercury. In June 1999, a sample was taken to test for mercury and has been filed by the company before the Madras High Court to show the environment was safe for workers. 93 Significantly, no contemporaneous records of methylmercury sampling, effluent sampling, water sampling, soil sampling, onsite hazardous waste disposal procedures, exposure pathways, or safety contingency plans while the factory was in operation have been produced by the company before the High Court. Having failed to interpret and monitor the law in the spirit in which it was written while the factory was in operation, the TNPCB failed to ensure that Hindustan Unilever fulfilled its obligations under the ‘polluter pays' principle. It even disregarded the instructions of a special five-member monitoring committee of the Supreme Court in 2004 to “fix liability” on Hindustan Unilever, appoint an independent consultant to review clean-up procedures, and form a local area committee of respected members of Kodaikanal's community who would monitor compliance with Supreme Court directives. 94

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Instead, the TNPCB allowed Hindustan Unilever to contract Environmental Resource Management (ERM) and the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) to make secondary assessments of decontamination targets and techniques. This meant that a member of the Supreme Court Monitoring Committee, Dr Tapan Chakrabarti, 95 head of NEERI's Biotech division, was now drawn into this contracted exercise. THE TNPCB'S LETTER to Hindustan Unilever granting permission for cleaning up the soil on the factory site to standards agreed by the TNPCB. In a letter to the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests in March 2010, the TNPCB said that standards had not been finalised. The TNPCB then cut out local residents from decontamination discussions after they objected to Hindustan Unilever engaging NEERI, which had resulted in the removal of some contaminated materials without proper technical assessment. 96 The objection of two Tamil Nadu-based members of the monitoring committee, Dr D.B. Boralkar and Dr Claude Alvares, that the Supreme Court's directions had “not been carried out in letter or in spirit,” 97 was not enough to change things. Right to Information Act requests reveal that Dr Boralkar and Dr Alvares were dropped from future meetings and that, instead of involving local residents, a ‘scientific experts' committee was set up. In June 2008, the clean-up standards for the factory were suddenly downgraded and the go-ahead was given for decontamination without informing the local community, the local forest department, or the municipal administration. 98 The TNPCB, Hindustan Unilever, and its paid consultants had been meeting behind closed doors from 2005 onwards. 99 The new standard allowed over twice the level of mercury suggested by Dames and Moore of the Dutch standard of 10mg/kg. No scientific justification for the change in clean-up target levels has been given. Now, the TNPCB has claimed to the Government of India's Ministry of Environment and Forests that the standards were never finalised, information obtained under the Right to Information Act reveals. 100 But Frontline has a copy of the letter from the TNPCB giving approval to Hindustan Unilever to remediate to the standards discussed, allowing the polluter a free hand on its own site. Doing well by doing good? Responding to our written questions, the company admits breach of established procedure in the sale of mercury-contaminated glass to a local scrap dealer. It also admits to polluting the soil on its Kodaikanal factory grounds with 366 kg of mercury. It admits to engaging, paying for, and conducting key scientific assessments itself but denies these are questionable. It maintains that the journal article published by its own doctors was peer-reviewed and hence there was no need for declaration of conflict of interest. The company maintains it has shared medical records with the employees, but admits only those from high-risk areas. It admits it has relied on year averages for women. It denies that the factory was a hazardous operation under law or that it compromised on safety and endangered workers' health. It points to records of monitoring undertaken at the factory, periodic evaluations of regulators, and the conclusions of the expert committee of doctors as evidence that it has no further obligations towards its employees for polluting the environment or for their health problems. A U.S.-based scientist who reviewed test results at the request of the workers noted that surface water samples from parts of the stream and the Kodai lake had mercury readings 30 times higher

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than what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends for fresh water containing fish that people consume. Hindustan Unilever maintains that it is within safe levels. It denies polluting the forest and lakes beyond its boundary walls, and maintains that its only remaining obligation to the wider community in Kodaikanal is to clean the soil to a standard its own consultants set. It denies that the pollution control board has already agreed to this standard. “HUL,” a company spokesperson asserted, “has acted as swiftly as possible while fully engaging the relevant stakeholders and authorities concerned to ensure quick and appropriate remedial measures.” In 2006, Hindustan Unilever claimed before the Madras High Court that it had incurred costs of Rs.22 crore in the clean-up process. Hindustan Unilever had profits of Rs.2,202 crore at the end of the 2010 financial year. 101 Its 75-year anniversary issue proclaims that the company is “Doing Well by Doing Good.” . Scientists from the DAE and the JNTU, Hyderabad, found detectable levels of methylmercury in this and two other lakes. The company says the mercury concentrations are low overall. “Companies should have social responsibilities,” reflects Dr Tanaka, speaking about the lessons learned in Japan from the Minamata case. “Potential polluters have to always monitor carefully environmental effects…. Polluters and administrators must actually visit the site and hear the voices of the locals. Protection of human health should be prioritised and polluters and administrators must take decisions based on information that is available.” 102 …………………………. 1.National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (February 2007): “Protocol for Remediation of Mercury Contaminated Site at HLL Thermometer Factory, Kodaikanal”. 2. “Dump for a dump, from India to U.S.”, The Statesman, April 17, 2003; “HLL Mercury Waste to leave for NY on May 7”, Business Line, May 5, 2003; “Activists hail reverse dumping”, International Herald Tribune, May 9, 2003; “HUL in a spot over NGO report”, India Business Insight, June 12, 2003; “Thermometer plant acted responsibly, says Banga”, Business Line, June 14, 2003; “Mercury's victims”, Frontline, August 16, 2003. 3. Interview with R. Vijaylakshmi, former temporary worker at Kodaikanal Mercury Thermometer Factory, March 15, 2010, Kodaikanal. 4. Affidavit of M.A. Mahindran, president, Ponds/HLL Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association, April 19, 2006, paragraph 33. 5. Interviews with former employees, Kodaikanal Mercury Thermometer Factory, March 12-17, 2010, Kodaikanal. 6. Details from PowerPoint presentation made during interview with Dr T. Rajgopal, vice president, medical and occupational health, Hindustan Unilever: “Kodai thermometer factory – occupational health surveillance,” March 23, 2010, Chennai. 7. Telephone interview with Dr Linda M. Jones, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, Massey University, New Zealand, July 26, 2010. 8. Affidavit of S. Raja Mohamed, general secretary, Ponds/HLL Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association, Objections to the [Experts'] Committee Report, June 30, 2008: “Chart on urine levels of women employees”: 47-53. 9. United States Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (March 1999): Toxicological Profile for Mercury: 13 and 58. 10. T. Rajgopal et al (April 2006): “Epidemiological surveillance of employees in a mercury thermometer plant”, Indian Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, Volume 10. 11. Interview with Dr T. Rajgopal, vice president, medical and occupational health, Hindustan Unilever, March 23, 2010, Chennai. 12. Affidavit of M.A. Mahindran, president, Ponds/HLL Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association, February 19, 2006. 13. Interview with Dr T. Rajgopal, vice president, medical and occupational health, Hindustan Unilever, March 23, 2010, Chennai.

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14. Interview with Rajesh Mani, Greenearth Trust, March 12, 2010, Kodaikanal. 15. URS Dames and Moore (May 8, 2002): “Environmental Site Assessment and Risk Assessment for Mercury HLL Thermometer Factory Site, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India”: 2-1. 16. Letter from Assistant Commissioner, Central Excise, Dindigul (C.No.IV/16/28/2002), dated April 29, 2003, to M/s Hindustan Lever Ltd: “Permission to export mercury-containing waste”. 17. Email from R. Ram, Corporate Communications, Hindustan Unilever, August 20, 2010. 18. URS Dames and Moore (May 8, 2002): “Environmental Site Assessment and Risk Assessment for Mercury HLL Thermometer Factory Site, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India”, Table 9: “Onsite Mercury Distribution and Details of Remediation Areas”. 19. United Nations Environment Programme (2002): Global Mercury Assessment http://www.unep.org/hazardoussubstances/Mercury/ MercuryPublications/ReportsPublications/GlobalMercuryAssessmentReportDecember2002/tabid/3617/language/en-US/Default.aspx 20. Presentation at Alliance Francaise by Shekar Dattatri, documentary film-maker, March 17, 2010, Chennai. 21. URS Dames and Moore (May 8, 2002): “Environmental Site Assessment and Risk Assessment for Mercury HLL Thermometer Factory Site, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India”: 4-3. 22. Details from PowerPoint presentation made during interview with K. Gopalakrishnan, former stores-in-charge, Kodaikanal Mercury Thermometer Factory: “Mercury Balance: Account of the lost mercury in Kodaikanal”, March 13, 2010, Kodaikanal. 23. URS Dames and Moore (May 8, 2002): “Environmental Site Assessment and Risk Assessment for Mercury HLL Thermometer Factory Site, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India”, Table 9: “Onsite Mercury Distribution and Details of Remediation Areas”. 24. Japan Public Health Association (October 2001): “Preventive Measures against Environmental Mercury Pollution and Its Health Effects”: 28. 25. URS Dames and Moore (May 8, 2002): “Environmental Site Assessment and Risk Assessment for Mercury HLL Thermometer Factory Site, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India”: 5-4. 26. Email from Dr Masaru Tanaka, Lead, United Nations Environment Programme Global Mercury Partnership Waste Management Area, and Chairperson, Waste Management and Recycling Experts' Committee, Central Environment Council, Ministry of Environment, Government of Japan, August 16, 2010. 27. URS Dames and Moore (May 8, 2002): “Environmental Site Assessment and Risk Assessment for Mercury HLL Thermometer Factory Site, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India”: Tables 7 and 8. 28. Memo from Dr Mark Chernaik, Environmental Law Alliance, “Critical assessment of documents purporting to support a site-specific target level of 25 mg/kg for the remediation of mercury-contaminated soils at the HUL factory site in Kodaikanal”, March 5, 2010. 29. D. Karunasagar et al (2006): “Studies of mercury pollution in a lake due to a thermometer factory situated in a tourist resort: Kodaikanal, India”, Environmental Pollution (143): 153-158. 30. Email from Dr Masaru Tanaka, Lead, United Nations Environment Programme Global Mercury Partnership Waste Management Area, and Chairperson, Waste Management and Recycling Experts' Committee, Central Environment Council, Ministry of Environment, Government of Japan, August 16, 2010. 31. Interview with John George, factory manager, Kodaikanal, Hindustan Unilever, March 23, 2010, Chennai. 32. U.K. Environment Agency (March 2009): “Soil Guidelines Values for Mercury in Soil”. 33. URS Dames and Moore (May 8, 2002): “Environmental Site Assessment and Risk Assessment for Mercury HLL Thermometer Factory Site, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India”: 5-1. 34. Unilever Environment Policy PDF from website. 35. Unilever website. 36. USEPA website. 37. India Water Pollution Act (1974).

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38. Interview with Girija Viraraghavan and others from the Palani Hills Conservation Council, March 12, 2010, Kodaikanal, and affidavit of M.A. Mahindran, president, Ponds/HLL Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association, February 19, 2006. 39. Affidavit of M.A. Mahindran, president, Ponds/HLL Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association, February 19, 2006 and April 19, 2006. 40. Counter affidavit of M.K. Sharma, vice chairman, Hindustan Unilever, April 12, 2006: Annex 16. 41. “Statement showing capital goods imported without duty”, Office of the Assistant Commissioner of Central Excise, Dindigul, obtained through Right to Information Act request, September 24, 2008 and appeal, March 1, 2009, by Shweta Narayan. 42. Environmental Resource Management (October 2006): “Site specific target levels”. 43. Affidavit of M.A. Mahindran, president, Ponds/HLL Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association, April 19, 2006, paragraph 31; Affidavit of M.A. Mahindran, president, Ponds/HLL Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association, November 4, 2006; Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association, Objections to the [Experts'] Committee report, June 30, 2008: “Comparison of urine levels (mean values) submitted by the company to the Committee: Hazardous and Non Hazardous Areas”: 54-56. 44. Affidavit of S. Raja Mohamed, general secretary, Ponds/HLL Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association, June 30, 2008: 17. 45. Affidavit of M.A. Mahindran, president, Ponds/HLL Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association, January 31, 2007. 46. Justice S.N. Bhargava, Retired Chief Justice, Sikkim High Court, and State Human Rights Commission Chairperson, Manipur, et al (June 2003): “Indian People's Tribunal Report on the alleged Environmental Pollution and Health Impacts Caused by the Hindustan Lever Thermometer Factory at Kodaikanal”: 34. 47. URS Dames and Moore (May 8, 2002): “Environmental Site Assessment and Risk Assessment for Mercury HLL Thermometer Factory Site, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India”: Table 3 Air Monitoring Data. 48. Counter affidavit of M.K. Sharma, vice chairman, Hindustan Unilever, April 12, 2006: “Register of Accidents and Register of Dangerous Occurrences”: Annex 19. 49. Affidavit of K. Gopalakrishnan, August 18, 2006. 50. URS Dames and Moore (May 8, 2002): “Environmental Site Assessment and Risk Assessment for Mercury HLL Thermometer Factory Site, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India”: 2-3. 51. URS Dames and Moore (May 8, 2002): “Environmental Site Assessment and Risk Assessment for Mercury HLL Thermometer Factory Site, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India”: 2-3. 52. Interview with Girija Viraraghavan and others from the Palani Hills Conservation Council, March 12, 2010, Kodaikanal. 53. URS Dames and Moore (May 8, 2002): “Environmental Site Assessment and Risk Assessment for Mercury HLL Thermometer Factory Site, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India”: 2-3. 54. Counter affidavit of M.K. Sharma, vice president, Hindustan Unilever, April 12, 2006: “Permission to collect and store hazardous waste from TNPCB, August 9, 1994”: Annex 12. 55. Letter from Assistant Commissioner, Central Excise, Dindigul (C.NO.4/16/28/2002), dated April 29, 2003, to M/s Hindustan Lever Ltd: “Permission to export mercury-containing waste”. 56. URS Dames and Moore (May 8, 2002): “Environmental Site Assessment and Risk Assessment for Mercury HLL Thermometer Factory Site, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India”: 1-1. 57. URS Dames and Moore (May 8, 2002): “Environmental Site Assessment and Risk Assessment for Mercury HLL Thermometer Factory Site, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India”: Tables 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10. 58. URS Dames and Moore (May 8, 2002): “Environmental Site Assessment and Risk Assessment for Mercury HLL Thermometer Factory Site, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India”: 1-1. 59. URS Dames and Moore (May 8, 2002): “Environmental Site Assessment and Risk Assessment for Mercury HLL Thermometer Factory Site, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India”: 1-2. 60. URS Dames and Moore (8 May 2002): “Environmental Site Assessment and Risk Assessment for Mercury HLL Thermometer Factory Site, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India”: Table 5. 61. Background source conversation, July 2010.

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62. Email from Dr Masaru Tanaka, Lead, United Nations Environment Programme Global Mercury Partnership Waste Management Area, and Chairperson, Waste Management and Recycling Experts Committee, Central Environment Council, Ministry of Environment, Government of Japan, August 16, 2010. 63. Justice S.N. Bhargava, Retired Chief Justice, Sikkim High Court, and State Human Rights Commission Chairperson, Manipur, et al (June 2003): “Indian People's Tribunal Report on the alleged Environmental Pollution and Health Impacts Caused by the Hindustan Lever Thermometer Factory at Kodaikanal”: 30. 64. Justice S.N. Bhargava, Retired Chief Justice, Sikkim High Court, and State Human Rights Commission Chairperson, Manipur, et al (June 2003): “Indian People's Tribunal Report on the alleged Environmental Pollution and Health Impacts Caused by the Hindustan Lever Thermometer Factory at Kodaikanal”: 32; and Japan Public Health Association (October 2001): “Preventive Measures against Environmental Mercury Pollution and Its Health Effects”: 28. 65. Interview with M.A. Mahindran, president, Ponds/HLL Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association, March 12, 2010, Kodaikanal. 66. Indian Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Volume 11, Issue 3, December 2007. 67. Report of the Indian Toxicological Research Centre: “Review of health records/exposure data”; Letter of Dr H.N. Saiyed, National Institute of Occupational and Social Health, September 11, 2006; Letter of Dr C.S. Pandav and Dr R.M. Pandey, All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, October 3, 2006. 68. Affidavit of S. Raja Mohamed, general secretary, Ponds/HLL Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association, June 30, 2008: 12. 69. Affidavit of S. Raja Mohamed, general secretary, Ponds/HLL Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association, June 30, 2008: 1. 70. Japan Public Health Association (October 2001): “Preventive Measures against Environmental Mercury Pollution and its Health Effects”: 56. 71. Telephone interview with Dr Linda M. Jones, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, Massey University, New Zealand, July 26, 2010. 72. Interview with Dr Jayaprakash Muliyil, Principal, Christian Medical College, Vellore, July 24, 2010, Vellore. 73. Interview with Dr Jayaprakash Muliyil, Principal, Christian Medical College, Vellore, July 24, 2010, Vellore. 74. Affidavit of S. Raja Mohamed, June 30, 2008. 75. Calculated from records held by the Ponds/HLL Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association. 76. Affidavit of S. Raja Mohamed, general secretary, Ponds/HLL Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association, Objections to the [Experts'] Committee Report, June 30, 2008: “Chart on urine levels of women employees”: 47-53 77. T. Rajgopal et al (April 2006): “Epidemiological surveillance of employees in a mercury thermometer plant”, Indian Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, Volume 10; Report of the Indian Toxicological Research Centre: “Review of health records/exposure data”; Letter of Dr. H.N. Saiyed, National Institute of Occupational and Social Health, September 11, 2006; Letter of Dr C.S. Pandav and Dr R.M. Pandey, All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, October 3, 2006; and Report of the Committee of Experts, December 24, 2007. 78. Telephone interview with Dr Linda M. Jones, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, Massey University, New Zealand, July 26, 2010. 79. Telephone interview with Dr Linda M. Jones, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, Massey University, New Zealand, July 26, 2010. 80. Telephone interview with Dr Linda M. Jones, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, Massey University, New Zealand, July 26, 2010. 81. Affidavit of S. Raja Mohamed, general secretary, Ponds/HLL Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association, Objections to the [Experts'] Committee report, June 30, 2008: “Details of the 13 ex-workers examined by the committee”: 57-59. 82. Telephone interview with Dr Linda M. Jones, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, Massey University, New Zealand, July 26, 2010. 83. Telephone interview with Dr Linda M. Jones, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, Massey University, New Zealand, July 26, 2010. 84. Telephone interview with Dr Linda M. Jones, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, Massey University, New Zealand, July 26, 2010.

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85. Counter affidavit of M.K. Sharma, vice chairman, Hindustan Unilever, April 12, 2006: “Form 100% Export Oriented Unit Application for licence or permission for establishment” to Department of Industry, Central Government, New Delhi, in the name of Pond's Exports Ltd and “Approval”, September 4, 1982: Annex 11. 86. From the records of the Tamil Nadu Factories Inspectorate produced before the court following the order of the Madras High Court on March 27, 2006: 3. 87. From the records of the Tamil Nadu Factories Inspectorate produced before the court following the order of the Madras High Court on March 27, 2006: 4. 88. Respondent affidavit of M.K. Sharma, vice chairman, Hindustan Unilever, October 11, 2006: Annex 3. 89. From the records of the Tamil Nadu Factories Inspectorate produced before the court following the order of the Madras High Court on March 27, 2006. 90. From the records of the Tamil Nadu Factories Inspectorate produced before the court following the order of the Madras High Court on March 27, 2006: 2. 91. Counter affidavit of M.K. Sharma, vice chairman, Hindustan Unilever, April 12, 2006: “Health Survey” by Dr W.R.S. Thangasamy, Certifying Surgeon of the Factories Inspectorate, July 16, 1998: Annex 20. 92. Affidavit of M.A. Mahindran, president, Ponds/HLL Ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association, February 19, 2006: paragraph 29. 93. Counter affidavit of M.K. Sharma, vice chairman, Hindustan Unilever, April 12, 2006: “TNPCB Ambient Air Quality Survey”, March 22, 1999, and “TNPCB Advance Environmental Laboratory, Madurai Results” collected June 23, 1999: Annex 19. 94. Supreme Court Monitoring Committee (September 2004): “Report of the visit of the SCMC to Tamil Nadu”. 95. Supreme Court Monitoring Committee (September 2004): “Report of the visit of the SCMC to Tamil Nadu”: 1. 96. Last recorded meeting, May 3, 2005, from minutes obtained under Right to Information Act request dated January 13, 2010, by Shweta Narayan, and granted February (undated) 2010. 97. Letter to R. Ramachandran, TNPCB, from Dr Claude Alvares, August 16, 2005, obtained under Right to Information Act request dated January 13, 2010, by Shweta Narayan, and granted February (undated) 2010. 98. Letter T4/TNPCB/HWM/F-27566/DGL/2008 from R. Ramachandran, TNPCB, to factory manager, Hindustan Unilever, June 19, 2008. 99. Minutes of meeting, April, June, December 2007, obtained under Right to Information Act request dated January 13, 2010, by Shweta Narayan, and granted February (undated) 2010. 100. TNPCB status note to Ministry of Environment and Forests, New Delhi, March 2010, and information obtained under Right to Information Act request dated March 30, 2010, by Shweta Narayan, and granted April 1, 2010. 101. Hindustan Unilever Annual Report 2009-2010. 102. Email from Dr Masaru Tanaka, Lead, United Nations Environment Programme Global Mercury Partnership Waste Management Area, and Chairperson, Waste Management and Recycling Experts Committee, Central Environment Council, Ministry of Environment, Government of Japan, August 16, 2010.

Business Class Rises in Ashes of Caste System By LYDIA POLGREEN September 10, 2010 The New York Times CHENNAI, India — Chezi K. Ganesan looks every inch the high-tech entrepreneur, dressed in the Silicon Valley uniform of denim shirt and khaki trousers, slick smartphone close at hand. He splits his time between San Jose and this booming coastal metropolis, running his $6 million a year computer chip-making company.

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IndiaHis family has come a long way. His grandfather was not allowed to enter Hindu temples, or even to stand too close to upper-caste people, and women of his Nadar caste, who stood one notch above untouchables in India’s ancient caste hierarchy, were once forced to bare their breasts before upper caste men as a reminder of their low station. “Caste has no impact on life today,” Mr. Ganesan said in an interview at one of Chennai’s exclusive social clubs, the kind of place where a generation ago someone of his caste would not have been welcome. “It is no longer a barrier.” The Nadars’ spectacular rise from despised manual laborers who made a mildly alcoholic palm wine to business leaders in one of India’s most prosperous states offers significant clues to India’s caste conundrum and how it has impeded economic progress in many parts of the country. India is enjoying an extended economic boom, with near double-digit growth. But the benefits have not been equally shared, and southern India has rocketed far ahead of much of the rest of the country on virtually every score — people here earn more money, are better educated, live longer lives and have fewer children. A crucial factor is the collapse of the caste system over the last half century, a factor that undergirds many of the other reasons that the south has prospered — more stable governments, better infrastructure and a geographic position that gives it closer connections to the global economy. “The breakdown of caste hierarchy has broken the traditional links between caste and profession, and released enormous entrepreneurial energies in the south,” said Ashutosh Varshney, a professor at Brown University who has studied the role of caste in southern India’s development. This breakdown, he said, goes a long way to explaining “why the south has taken such a lead over the north in the last three decades.” India’s Constitution abolished caste, the social hierarchy that has ordered Indian life for millenniums, and instituted a system of quotas to help those at the bottom rise up. But caste divisions persist nonetheless, with upper castes dominating many spheres of life despite their relatively small numbers. While in the south lower caste members concentrated on economic development and education as a route to prosperity, in the north the chief aim of caste-based groups has been political power and its spoils. As a result India’s northern lower castes tend to be less educated and less prosperous than their southern counterparts. Charismatic leaders in the north from lower castes have used caste identity as a way to mobilize voters, winning control over several large north Indian states. Caste so thoroughly permeates politics in the northern half of the world’s largest democracy that it is often said that people don’t cast their vote; they vote their caste. Caste is so crucial to northern politics that caste-based parties have demanded that caste be included in India’s census, and the government, bowing to pressure, agreed to collect data on caste for the first time since independence. They hope that by showing their large numbers, caste-based parties can force government to set aside more jobs for their communities. Tamil Nadu’s Nadars belong to a community in the middle of India’s caste system, occupying a place barely above the untouchables, now called Dalits. Academics and analysts have closely watched the rise of the Nadar caste for clues about the role caste barriers play in holding back India’s economic progress.

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Unlike northern India, where caste-based political movements are a fairly recent phenomenon, lower castes in southern India began agitating against upper-caste domination at the beginning of the 20th century. Because these movements arose before independence and the possibility of elected political power, they focused on issues like dignity, education, and self-reliance, Mr. Varshney said. Nadars created business associations to provide entrepreneurs with credit they could not get from banks. They started charities to pay for education for poor children. They built their own temples and marriage halls to avoid upper caste discrimination. “Our community focused on education, not politics,” said R. Chandramogan, a Nadar entrepreneur who built India’s largest privately owned dairy company from scratch. “We knew that with education, we could accomplish anything.” As a result, when independence came the southern lower castes, who had already broken the upper caste monopoly on economic power, enjoyed political power almost right from the start. Tamil Nadu set aside 69 percent of government jobs and seats in higher education for downtrodden castes, which helped rapidly move lower caste people into the mainstream. The north put in place affirmative action policies, but because education was widely embraced, southern people from lower castes were better able to take advantage of these opportunities than northerners. When India’s economy liberalized in the 1990s, the south was far more prepared to take advantage of globalization, said Samuel Paul of the Public Affairs Center, a research institution that has looked closely at the growing divide between north and south India. “The south was ready,” Mr. Paul said. Nadar businessmen like C. Manickavel have skillfully ridden the waves of prosperity that have crashed over India since liberalization, making small fortunes. Mr. Manickavel’s father had started a small printing business in Chennai, which at its peak made $40,000 a year. But he sent his son to one of the best engineering schools in India, and Mr. Manickavel has turned that modest business into a $1 million-a-year operation that designs e-books for big American publishers. “We are supposed to be a backward community but we don’t think of ourselves that way,” he said in an interview in his state-of-the-art paperless e-publishing facility here. “I make sure my daughter studies at the best school in Chennai. We are as good as anybody else.” It remains to be seen if the political agitation around caste in northern India will produce prosperity for lower caste people there, experts say. In India’s liberalizing economy these communities must prepare themselves to compete, not simply demand a bigger slice of the shrinking government cake, said Rajeev Ranjan, the chief bureaucrat in charge of industrial development in Tamil Nadu. He is originally from Bihar, a northern state thoroughly in the grip of caste politics, but he has been stationed in the south for 25 years. He said northern states must heed the southern example. “Without that kind of social change it is very hard to do economic development,” he said. “One depends on the other.”

View From SAN FRANCISCO

Reverse Migration Dot Com India’s Silicon Valley diaspora is proving a key resource, recycling to India much of the energy,

creativity and experience that made the Valley a global technology icon.

Sean Randolph Sep 8 2010 OUTLOOKINDIA

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Throughout history, diasporas have reflected economic or political disruptions, ultimately enriching the receiving countries. Silicon Valley’s dynamic churn is the latest example, as many Chinese and Indian migrants are returning home, ready to lay a new foundation for innovation and growth. For some Chinese, immigration to the United States reflected despair in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre; for others, it represented economic opportunity at a time of economic stagnation. Indians left for similar reasons, though less political: India’s economy offered little future for the talented and ambitious, while opportunities abroad promised a better life. Seeking jobs and education, many of the best and brightest came to Silicon Valley. Powerful push-pull dynamics made California a draw. Its universities offered world-class education. Programs in engineering and computer science drew Indians in particular. This coincided with the run-up to the dot-com boom and was accelerated by the Y2K scare, which generated massive demand for programmers to fix the problem. The gap was filled by importing engineers, primarily from India. By 1986, nearly 60 percent of Indian Institute of Technology engineering graduates were migrating overseas, mostly to Silicon Valley. Research by Berkeley’s AnnaLee Saxenian found that by 1990 a third of the Bay Area’s science and engineering workforce was foreign born. One fourth of its engineers – 28,000 – were Indian, more than half with advanced degrees. By 1998, as the tech boom neared its peak, 774 of the 11,443 tech firms started since 1980 had Indian CEOs. From 1995 to 2005, 15 percent of Silicon Valley startups were launched by Indians – the largest number for any immigrant group. Today about half of California’s 475,000 Indian immigrants live in the San Francisco Bay Area, making it the second largest community in the country after New York. Its profile is unique: median income is $107,000, 75 percent of adults have at least a bachelor’s degree, and 70 percent are in management or professional positions. The economic contributions are impressive. Immigrants from India have founded iconic Silicon Valley firms such as Sun Microsystems (Vinod Khosla), Brocade (Kumar Malavalli), Cirrus Logic (Suhas Patil) and Hotmail (Sabeer Bhatia). Behind this lie pivotal contributions to technology innovation, including ethernet (Kanwal Rehki), fiber optics (Narinder Kapany) and the Pentium chip (Vinod Dham). Many Indian entrepreneurs, having achieved success, have gone on to become venture capitalists, investing in and supporting a new generation of startups. Now a new migration is underway, which promises to jumpstart innovation in India. It has three drivers: reduced opportunity in the US after the dot-com collapse and the second recession in a decade; sustained growth of 8 to 9 percent in India, which may now offer more entrepreneurial opportunity than the US; and India’s development as a technology platform and market with global scale. Students are part of the story. India sends more students to the US than any country, including China. Most study computer science, business and engineering at the graduate level. But while many of the best students continue to come and Silicon Valley remains a draw, perspectives are shifting. In the past most planned to stay indefinitely, but many now arrive expecting to return home, perhaps with a few years work experience. Regressive US immigration policies are a factor, but opportunity is the driver.

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Those who return – and others assigned by their companies short-term – find a receptive environment. While not lacking for business leaders or entry-level engineers, India is short on middle- and upper-level managers with the skills needed by global companies. Venture capital is also in its infancy. This is where Silicon Valley comes in. In addition to employing tens of thousands of engineers, companies such as Intel, Google, Cisco and Oracle are staffing top levels of their India teams with California employees of Indian origin. The India offices of venture firms such as IDG Ventures and Sequoia Capital are also led by returnees, who team with local partners. As many as a third of the participants in entrepreneurial forums such as Delhi’s “Startup Saturday” are returnees. Conversations readily turn to schools, colleagues and favorite restaurants in San Francisco. Flights between San Francisco and Bangalore, where many Bay Area firms have R&D centers, run full as entrepreneurs, employees and investors travel both directions. Lufthansa’s “Bangalore Express” is one of the airline’s most heavily trafficked routes and its second-largest long-haul market. Institutional intermediaries also play a role. The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) started in San Jose in 1992 as a dinner group of Indian expats, with the idea of supporting local entrepreneurs. Eighteen years later, TiE runs a global network of 53 chapters with 11,000 members in 12 countries. The largest contingent outside the US is in India, supported by active links to the mothership, TiE Global, in Santa Clara. The Bay Area-based Wadhwani Foundation, led by Aspect Development founder and Symphony Technology Group chair Romesh Wadhwani, also promotes entrepreneurship. Projects include the Wadhwani Center for Entrepreneurship Development at the Indian School of Business, and the National Entrepreneurship Network. The network, which aims to help Indians start companies, engages 233 institutions, 350 instructors and 250,000 students. Faculty from Stanford and other US universities help with curriculum and faculty development. Another Valley resident and co-founder of Indian IT giant HCL, Yogesh Vaidya, runs a national network of schools to train recent graduates in the skills needed to work in global enterprises. This combination of money and experience can be potent. Bala Manian, a founder of six Bay Area companies, is a case in point. His latest start-up ReaMetrics, based in Silicon Valley and Bangalore, employs a team laced with returnees. Manian moves between the Valley and Bangalore every six weeks, focusing also on his role as investment committee chair of India Innovation Fund. Most of the entrepreneurs approaching the firm have US and Valley roots. Through all this a cultural conversation is taking place. Despite its success in IT, an army of engineers, and world-class educational institutions, risk-taking in India is not engrained – in contrast to Silicon Valley where the start-up ethos is pervasive, risk-taking is expected, and failure is accepted. Few technological breakthroughs have originated in India, and an entrepreneurial innovation culture has yet to take hold, as the highest goal of university graduates is typically to work for a major IT firm, not start a company. Silicon Valley venture funds, and advisers such as Silicon Valley Bank, aren’t just bringing capital and supporting entrepreneurs. They also bring the experience, networking and hands-on support that help convey the Valley’s entrepreneurial ethos. Recent beneficiaries include the first consumer internet company in India to go public (Naukri.com, funded by Kleiner Perkins), India’s first online gaming company (Kreda, funded by IDG Ventures), India’s version of Expedia (Make My Trip.com, funded by Sierra Ventures), and Café Coffee Day, India’s answer to Starbucks (funded by Sequoia Capital.)

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With its large market and many low-income consumers, India is developing its own brand of innovation, based on effective and low-cost services and technology deployment. Initially targeting domestic markets, potential applications are global. This home-grown entrepreneurship will gather momentum of its own. But for now, India’s Silicon Valley diaspora is proving a key resource for both countries, recycling to India much of the energy, creativity and experience that made the Valley a global technology icon. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sean Randolph, president and CEO of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, is the author of a recent study Global Reach: Emerging Ties

Between the San Francisco Bay Area and India. Rights:Copyright © 2010 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. YaleGlobal Online

Opinion

The Wrongs About The Right To Food How does the government hope to choose between the destitute, the poor, and the barely surviving;

or if you like, the starving, the chronically hungry, the malnourished, the anaemic and the food

insecure? Ananya Mukherjee Reed Sep 08, 2010 OULOOK INDIA ‘How much poorer do we need to be?’ asked Ravi, a harassed and emaciated young autorickshaw driver I recently met in Bangalore. He was shocked to find that he did not qualify as ‘BPL’ (Below Poverty Line), and therefore won’t get what he had hoped for at the ration shop. As he put it, he and his wife work ‘all the time’, and yet with two ailing parents, they were barely surviving. I suspect our barely surviving millions live with the same anguish I saw in Ravi’s eyes: am I poor enough to qualify? Will I get a BPL card? Worse still, our Ravis (or their overworked wives and ailing parents) have absolutely no voice in determining those ‘qualifications’ they are required to meet. Being human is not enough; being citizen is not enough; being poor and hungry is not enough either. They have to be exactly as poor and hungry as the government requires them to be. This, in essence, is the human face of ‘targeting’. Under targeting, the state establishes criteria to determine which groups ‘truly deserve’ whatever benefits it chooses to offer. Universal regimes, on the other hand, give benefits to the entire population as a matter of right. Remember how the IMF championed targeting during the glorious days of structural adjustment? It went from country to country forcing states to dismantle universal social policy regimes and wreaked havoc on the poor. It is disconcerting, to say the least, that targeting seems to be the officially favoured approach with respect to the Right to Food. With the pervasive nature of hunger and malnutrition in India today, one might wonder how a universal right to food can even be in question. Should every Indian not have a right to be free from hunger and food insecurity? Should anything less suffice? I suppose when a government needs court orders to get rotting grains to its starving citizens, and a veteran

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minister ‘mistakes’ a supreme court order for a casual suggestion, nothing can be taken for granted. And now comes the PM’s rebuke to the SC for its alleged intervention in policy-making. But how about the gross failures of policy-making that made the court’s intervention necessary in the first place? A targeted approach to food security, based on a myopic premise of ‘resource efficiency’ will be yet another addition to that long line of policy failures. What’s wrong with targeting? The argument for targeting is potentially very seductive. Here is how it goes. If it could, the government would feed every hungry person. But it can’t. It has only a limited amount of resources, which it cannot ‘fritter away’. It neither has enough grain (barring what is in the warehouses) nor enough money (barring the revenues it ‘foregoes’ from the corporate sector). More importantly, under the universal scheme, the rich would abuse the government’s goodwill and grab even these scarce resources. It must choose therefore to feed only those who are the ‘most deserving’. And how does it do that? Choosing between the rich and poor would be relatively easy. But in India’s vast and growing landscape of hunger, targeting means choosing between the destitute, the poor, and the barely surviving; or if you like, the starving, the chronically hungry, the malnourished, the anaemic and the food insecure. While planners and technocrats see important differences between these categories of people, the truth is that all of them need food support. None of them earn an income that can buy a basic, nutrition-adequate food basket. The real question before us is why this is the case: Why is it that so many people get so little value for their work that they must go hungry? Naturally, where the need for support is so pervasive, targeting constitutes a rather difficult exercise: an exercise that involves some serious questions of justice and democracy. For one, can a right based on ‘targeting’ be considered a ‘right’ at all? It certainly cannot qualify as an inalienable right as human rights should be, and would contradict the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. By vesting in the state the authority to determine who is entitled to that right, it reduces the ‘right’ to a matter of discretion, or at best a a highly tenuous and negotiable moral obligation. Is it really so different from you and I trying to help someone in need when we feel have some money to spare? Legislation based on such an unclear distinction between rights and discretion can be rather dangerous, particularly where so many lives hang in balance. Second, targeting involves very serious questions of justice. How can the state justly choose the ‘most deserving’? How does it determine what is a just distribution of food? As Amartya Sen has warned, consensus on such questions of justice is difficult to reach and require reasoned public discussion. ‘Reasoned’ discussion however, is rendered difficult, if not impossible, when unequal power relations exist. Some have the power to unfairly influence public discourse while others are marginalized. Most importantly: can the question be settled justly if the poor and the hungry are systematically excluded from these discourses? As of now, the vital norms that determine the lives of the poor are almost entirely set by others. This itself is a kind of injustice, of having to live by norms we have not participated in establishing — but others have established for us. It violates a basic principle of self-determination. It reflects, as well, a structural deficit of democracy, particularly unacceptable from elites who regularly milk the democracy cow for electoral gains or for glory at the global stage.

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A targeted approach to food (or basic needs) is both unjust and undemocratic in this sense of denying self-determination. A universal approach avoids the injustice of violating self-determination. However, a universal approach may err in that it treats unequals as equals, by giving the hungry and the non-hungry the same right. But so does electoral democracy in deeply unequal societies. Are we ready to let the poorest have guaranteed rights to political representation as well? Given the paucity of honest politicians, how about guaranteeing two honest politicians per poor person at three rupees a piece? Absurdities aside, surely the way to reduce the conflict between democracy and inequality is to reduce inequality rather than dilute democracy. The same goes for a right as vital as the right to food — the solution is not to restrict the right but to remove the constraints that prevent it from being enjoyed equally by all. A targeted approach takes these constraints as given. It allows the state to constantly invoke those ‘constraints’, negotiate its targets and manoeuvre its obligations to the hungry. The state still retains the power to decide who it wants to feed and when. The citizens’ right to food becomes a residual of state power. But most critically: targeting removes from public scrutiny — and the purview of legislation — the fundamental reasons as to why the state’s constraints come to exist in the first place. Why indeed is there not ‘enough’ money or ‘enough’ grain? Could we have more money, for example, by reducing write-offs to business? Could we have more grain by reversing policies which force farmers out of farming? It is precisely in this potential to raise these questions that the greatest strength of universalism lies. By giving every citizen a right to food, it creates an obligation for the state to reorder its priorities, rather than constantly pleading resource constraints. It reduces the state’s wiggle room to play with hunger. In sum, it gives the public greater ammunition to scrutinize how governments define their constraints and priorities. Universalism and beyond A major caveat, however. If our goal is to really get to the root causes of hunger, then even a universal right to food will not do: we must insist on a broad understanding of that right as well. In the current discussions, ‘Right to Food’ means the right to consume a certain amount of food. No more. But the right to food can go much further than that. As the global peasant movements demand, the Right to Food must also include the right to determine how food is produced. These movements point to a deeper, structural injustice: the majority of the world’s hungry are those who produce food — but are powerless to determine how food is produced or consumed. Right now, the power to determine food production resides with large agribusiness or with governments. Both are focused on growing ‘more’ food: one for profit and the other for political power, and with terrible consequences. This is why rich governments are engaging in land grab of massive proportions. According to a recent report, some 125 million acres (roughly equal to Sweden) has been grabbed by rich countries for outsourcing agricultural production: “Visit a supermarket in Abu Dhabi and you’ll be greeted by row after row of picture-perfect produce .. It’s likely those rows of shiny vegetables and fruit came from an improbable source: Ethiopia, a country practically synonymous with famine. Yes, Africa, where one in three people is malnourished, is now growing tomatoes and butter lettuce for export... Ethiopia’s biggest greenhouse farming operation is kept hidden from curious, or hungry, eyes...” (See ‘Famine-ridden Ethiopia: What’s the new global source for fresh, shiny produce?’)

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Some eighty Indian companies, allegedly with support from the Indian government, are active in this area as well. In 2009, a Bangalore-based company with large agricultural projects in Ethiopia claimed to hold “one of the largest agriculture land banks in the world”. As Kenya’s Daily Nation reported in June 2009: “India leads the "land grabbing" race and so far Indian agricultural investment has been more than $2.5 billion. India's total investment in Ethiopia was $300 million three years ago and has now grown to $ 4.3 billion. It is double the amount of Western aid offered to Ethiopia” (See ‘Amid hunger, foreign companies in race to 'grab' Ethiopia's arable land’) Equally remarkable developments are occurring in the area of genetic engineering, the other much-loved ‘solution’ to hunger. For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Monsanto and USAID have teamed up to take genetic engineering to new heights. The Foundation has invested $23.1 million in 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock. But there is more: “They also need the power of U.S. government funding. That is where the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Casey-Lugar come in. USAID is now headed up by former Gates employee Rajiv Shah. The Casey-Lugar Global Food Security act ties foreign aid to GMOs. When the Gates Foundation places a bet, they like to hold all the cards.” See ‘Monsanto in Gates' Clothing? The Emperor's New GMOs’) In this perverse race to grow more food, a justiciable Right to Food, interpreted narrowly, can become a dangerous double-edged sword. It may well lend legitimacy to these anti-people pro-profit growth strategies, which governments will support in the name of fulfilling the right to food. Therefore, along with laws that govern food distribution, we also need laws that govern food production. We need laws that prevent profiteering from food and land and from vesting all food-related decisions with corporations. Right to Food must also mean that food producing communities have the right to determine how food is to be produced. This is what global social movements are calling food sovereignty, and this is what people in some of the world’s poorest countries are struggling for. Haitians, for instance, began to mobilize for food sovereignty even before they had recovered their loved ones from the January earthquake. Bolivia, Ecuador, Mali, Senegal and Venezuela have put food sovereignty in their constitutions. In India, Kerala’s Food Security Action Scheme appears to go beyond the narrow notion of food security towards a more comprehensive strategy. The 2008 legislation which aims to prevent paddy-producing land and wetland from being diverted to other uses, particularly construction, is an important piece in this strategy. The Action Scheme also calls explicitly for rejuvenating fallow land so as to increase agricultural production. In a fascinating experiment which encourages women to take up agriculture, the state’s anti-poverty mission, Kudumbashree, has brought some 65,000 acres of land under cultivation. The cultivators are groups of women who jointly lease land, cultivate it, decide how much of their produce they wish to consume and sell the surplus to local markets. As I travelled through Kerala to meet Kudumbashree farmers, I was struck by the changes it has already brought about in women’s lives. Most are/were agricultural labourers but now see a possibility of becoming independent producers. For them, the act of farming seemed to deliver a much stronger, more palpable food security that came from having control over their production and their produce. Their biggest problem is indeed the oldest one: of not owning land. As this experiment clearly indicates, the right to food cannot be realized without opening up these classic (and unsettled) questions of land ownership and agrarian relations.

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While many would agree that these questions have serious implications for food security, they will immediately warn against ‘trying to load too much on to a single act’ (the proposed Food Security Act that is). The question is not ‘how much’ but ‘what’. Laws/rights are manifestations of social relations. They can either simply legitimise unequal social relations or open up possibilities for changing them. Universalising the right to food opens up possible — albeit not unequivocal — paths to challenge the unequal social relations which govern the food economy. A targeted approach on the other hand provides a tool to manage and legitimise those inequities. And it gives states and policy-makers the moral impunity to do so, in the name of serving only the ‘truly deserving’. ---------------------------------------------- Ananya Mukherjee Reed is Associate Professor, Political Science and Development Studies at York University, Toronto,

Ontario, Canada

. Energy in the developing world

Power to the people Technology and development: A growing number of initiatives are promoting bottom-up ways to

deliver energy to the world’s poor

Sep 2nd 2010 From The Economist Print Edition AROUND 1.5 billion people, or more than a fifth of the world’s population, have no access to electricity, and a billion more have only an unreliable and intermittent supply. Of the people without electricity, 85% live in rural areas or on the fringes of cities. Extending energy grids into these areas is expensive: the United Nations estimates that an average of $35 billion-40 billion a year needs to be invested until 2030 so everyone on the planet can cook, heat and light their premises, and have energy for productive uses such as schooling. On current trends, however, the number of “energy poor” people will barely budge, and 16% of the world’s population will still have no electricity by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. But why wait for top-down solutions? Providing energy in a bottom-up way instead has a lot to recommend it. There is no need to wait for politicians or utilities to act. The technology in question, from solar panels to low-energy light-emitting diodes (LEDs), is rapidly falling in price. Local, bottom-up systems may be more sustainable and produce fewer carbon emissions than centralised schemes. In the rich world, in fact, the trend is towards a more flexible system of distributed, sustainable power sources. The developing world has an opportunity to leapfrog the centralised model, just as it leapfrogged fixed-line telecoms and went straight to mobile phones. But just as the spread of mobile phones was helped along by new business models, such as pre-paid airtime cards and village “telephone ladies”, new approaches are now needed. “We need to reinvent how energy is delivered,” says Simon Desjardins, who manages a programme at the Shell Foundation that invests in for-profit ways to deliver energy to the poor. “Companies need to come up with innovative business models and technology.” Fortunately, lots of people are doing just that. Let there be light Start with lighting, which prompted the establishment of the first electrical utilities in the rich world. At the “Lighting Africa” conference in Nairobi in May, a World Bank project to encourage private-sector solutions for the poor, 50 lighting firms displayed their wares, up from just a handful

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last year. This illustrates both the growing interest in bottom-up solutions and falling prices. Prices of solar cells have also fallen, so that the cost per kilowatt is half what it was a decade ago. Solar cells can be used to power low-energy LEDs, which are both energy-efficient and cheap: the cost of a set of LEDs to light a home has fallen by half in the past decade, and is now below $25. “This could eliminate kerosene lighting in the next ten years, the way cellphones took off in about 13 years,” says Richenda Van Leeuwen of the Energy Access Initiative at the UN Foundation in Washington, DC. That would have a number of benefits: families in the developing world may spend as much as 30% of their income on kerosene, and kerosene lighting causes indoor air pollution and fires. But such systems are still beyond the reach of the very poorest. “There are hundreds of millions who can afford clean energy, but there is still a barrier for the billions who cannot,” says Sam Goldman, the chief executive of D.light. His firm has developed a range of solar-powered systems that can provide up to 12 hours of light after charging in sunlight for one day. D.light’s most basic solar lantern costs $10. But the price would have to fall below $5 to make it universally affordable, according to a study by the International Finance Corporation, an arm of the World Bank. So there is scope for further improvement. It is not just new technology that is needed, but new models. Much of the ferment in bottom-up energy entrepreneurialism is focusing on South Asia, where 570m people in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, mostly in rural areas, have no access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. One idea is to use locally available biomass as a feedstock to generate power for a village-level “micro-grid”. Husk Power Systems, an Indian firm, uses second-world-war-era diesel generators fitted with biomass gasifiers that can use rice husks, which are otherwise left to rot, as a feedstock. Wires are strung on cheap, easy-to-repair bamboo poles to provide power to around 600 families for each generator. Co-founded three years ago by a local electrical engineer, Gyanesh Pandey, Husk has established five mini-grids in Bihar, India’s poorest state, where rice is a staple crop. It hopes to extend its coverage to 50 mini-grids during 2010. Consumers pay door-to-door collectors upfront for power, and Husk collects a 30% government subsidy for construction costs. Its pilot plants were profitable within six months, so its model is sustainable. Generating electricity from rice husksEmergence BioEnergy takes this approach a step farther. Its aim is to provide many entrepreneurial opportunities around energy production, says Iqbal Quadir, the firm’s founder, who is also director of the Legatum Centre for Development & Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A cattle farmer in a small village in Bangladesh might, for example, operate a one-kilowatt generator in his hut, powered by methane from cow manure stored in his basement. He can then sell surplus electricity to his neighbours and use the waste heat from the generator to run a refrigerator to chill milk. This preserves milk that otherwise might be spoilt, offers new sources of income to the farmer (selling power and other services, such as charging mobile phones or running an internet kiosk) and provides power to others in his village. The farmer funds all this with a microfinance loan. It is no coincidence that this is a similar model to the “telephone lady” scheme, pioneered in Bangladesh a few years ago, in which women use microloans to buy mobile phones and then sell access, by the call, to other villagers; Mr Quadir helped establish Grameenphone, now the largest mobile operator in Bangladesh, and hopes to repeat its success in energy. After a pilot project in two villages, Emergence BioEnergy plans a broader roll-out in 2011 in conjunction with BRAC, a giant microfinance and development NGO.

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Another project, in India, aims to convert women from gathering wood, which denudes forests, to using canisters of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). India’s four state-owned regional power companies, including Bharat Petroleum Corporation, will build a national network of thousands of LPG-powered community kitchens. Local entrepreneurs will then provide the LPG and charge villagers to use the kitchens in 15-minute increments. Harish Hande, managing director of Selco Solar, a social enterprise in India that promotes the adoption of new energy technologies, says the important thing is not so much to deliver energy to the poor, but to provide new ways to generate income. His firm has devised a solar-powered sewing machine, for example. Last year Mr Hande started an incubation lab in rural Karnataka, in southern India, to bring together local customers and engineering interns from MIT, Stanford and Imperial College, London. The lab is currently piloting a hybrid banana dryer that runs on biomass during wet spells and sunlight on dry days to make packets of dried banana—so that farmers no longer have to rely on selling their crop immediately. Making it pay Even when new technology and models are available, the logistics of rolling them out can be daunting. The two big challenges are providing the upfront investment for energy schemes, and building and maintaining the necessary distribution systems to enable them to reach sufficient scale. At the moment, most schemes are funded by angel investors, foundations and social venture-capital funds. There is a vigorous debate about whether the private sector on its own can make these models work as technology improves, or whether non-profit groups are needed to fill the gaps in funding and distribution. Microfinance institutions may seem the natural financial partners to help the poor pay for energy systems, since they are the only organisations with millions of poor customers. But teething problems are formidable and success stories are few, says Patrick Maloney of the Lemelson Foundation, which invests in clean-energy technologies for the poor. A telephone lady could buy a mobile phone for a relatively small sum, and would immediately have a source of income with which to repay the loan. Although a household that buys a solar lamp saves money on kerosene, the investment takes several months to pay for itself, and there is no actual income from the lamp. For bigger energy projects, such as micro-generators, the loan required is much larger, and therefore riskier, than the loan for a mobile phone. Moreover, microfinance institutions may lack the funds to identify reliable energy suppliers, educate loan officers about clean-energy technologies and build a support network for energy schemes. One way to solve this problem, being pursued by MicroEnergy Credits, a social enterprise, is to plug microfinance institutions into carbon markets. Projects can then be funded by selling carbon credits when a microfinance customer switches from kerosene to solar lighting, for example. Distribution is also a problem, particularly in Africa and South Asia, where the majority of the world’s energy-poor live. Infrastructure and supply chains are poor or non-existent, particularly in rural areas. Recruiting and training a sales force, and educating consumers of the benefits of switching away from wood or kerosene, must be paid for somehow. Social enterprises are innovating in this area, too. Solar Aid, a non-profit group, specialises in setting up microfranchises to identify and train entrepreneurs. The organisation works with local authorities to identify potential entrepreneurs, who must gather signatures from their local community—providing both the endorsement of their neighbours and a future customer base. They then undergo five days of

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training with an exam at the end. Solar Aid is also testing a kiosk-based system to help entrepreneurs distribute LED lighting in the Kibera district of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Some hurdles to bottom-up energy projects are more easily addressed. In particular, high import duties on clean-energy products in many developing countries, notably in Africa, hamper their adoption by the poor. Ethiopia, for example, imposes a 100% duty on imports of solar products, while Malawi charges a 47.5% tax on LED lighting systems. Such taxes are sometimes defended on the basis that only the rich can afford fancy technology. But the same was said about mobile phones a decade ago—and look at them now.

Mobile internet in emerging markets

The next billion geeks How the mobile internet will transform the BRICI countries

Sep 2nd 2010 | DADRI, UTTAR PRADESH From The Economist Print Edition BUYING a mobile phone was the wisest $20 Ranvir Singh ever spent. Mr Singh, a farmer in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, used to make appointments in person, in advance, to deliver fresh buffalo milk to his 40-odd neighbours. Now his customers just call when they want some. Mr Singh’s income has risen by 25%, to 7,000 rupees ($149) a month. And he hears rumours of an even more bountiful technology. He has heard that “something on mobile phones” can tell him the current market price of his wheat. Mr Singh does not know that that “something” is the internet, because, like most Indians, he has never seen or used it. But the phone in his calloused hand hints at how hundreds of millions of people in emerging markets—perhaps even billions—will one day log on. Only 81m Indians (7% of the population) regularly use the internet. But brutal price wars mean that 507m own mobile phones. Calls cost as little as $0.006 per minute. Indian operators such as Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications sign up 20m new subscribers a month. In other developing countries, too, there are many more mobile phones than internet connections. In Brazil, Russia, India, China and Indonesia (the so-called BRICI countries), there are 610m regular internet users but a staggering 1.8 billion mobile-phone connections, according to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In a report called “The Internet’s New Billion”, BCG predicts that by 2015 there will be 1.2 billion internet users in these countries—dwarfing the total in America and Japan (see chart). These new internet users will mostly log on via their mobile phones. This tends to be cheaper and easier than any other option. In Brazil, fixed-line broadband is often prohibitively expensive; in Russia, where it can be much cheaper, it is often unavailable. In India, where infrastructure is always a headache, it is hard to get a good basic landline, let alone broadband.

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Poor people seldom have personal computers. In the BRICI countries, whose combined population is more than 3 billion, there are only 440m PCs. Many people use internet cafés, but these are inaccessible to rural folk. A connection in your pocket is far more convenient. Hordes of Indians will start using their mobiles to access the internet early next year when third-generation (3G) services, which allow subscribers to access the web, arrive. Kunal Bajaj, India director of Analysys Mason, a British consultancy, expects the take-up to be as fast—and as revolutionary—as it has been for mobile phones. “The telecoms companies have seen what happens when they drop prices. They’ve already tasted blood. The price wars will be just as aggressive,” he says. The stakes are high. In developing countries, every 10 percentage-point increase in mobile-phone penetration yields an extra 0.81 percentage points of annual economic growth, according to a 2009 World Bank study. The mobile internet could be even more powerful. The unemployed will search for jobs online. Farmers in remote areas will find customised advice on crop planting. The drawback of the internet is that you have to be literate to use it. That is a huge problem in India, where the literacy rate is only 60% (in China and Russia, it is over 90%). Mr Singh, the farmer, cannot read, so he cannot send text messages. He says he often needs help dialling numbers correctly, too.

Nalanda university

Ivory pagodas An ancient pan-Asian university might yet open again Sep 2nd 2010 From The Economist Print Edition NALANDA is an unlovely place in the poorest state in India. Yet, as in much of Bihar, a prosaic present belies a poetic past. It is the site of one of the first great universities which, half a millennium before the founding of Oxford, flourished with some 10,000 students and monks from all over Asia. Mango groves and lotus pools circled its halls, and an 8th-century inscription touted its “row of pagodas the spires of which touched the clouds.” If some scholars and diplomats have their way, a new generation of students will be enrolled. A bill has just snaked through India’s parliament calling for Nalanda’s revival, at a likely cost of several hundred million dollars. The Nalanda Mentor Group, led by Amartya Sen, an economics Nobel laureate, has overseen the project since it was first proposed in 2006. The Bihar state government has agreed to provide 500 acres for a new campus and India’s Planning Commission has proffered 1 billion rupees (some $21m) to get the project started. A chancellor has also been appointed. Nalanda could be a showpiece of regional diplomatic engagement: a declaration in support of it was signed at a 2009 summit in Thailand by 16 countries, of which Japan and Singapore have shown most interest. Even China has offered to help, says Mr Sen, who notes a Chinese former foreign minister is part of the project. George Yeo, Singapore’s foreign minister who is also on the Mentor Group, says Nalanda matters to the whole region, not least because a translation of the Lotus Sutra, a religious text, by one of its monks is the basis for Mahayana Buddhism practised in East Asia. Whatever the university comes to symbolise, it must first be built. “There is no commitment to funds even now,” admits Mr Sen, but fund-raising is beginning. Setting up universities by inter-governmental agreement is also an unproven model, but Mr Sen points to a new one in Delhi

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founded by the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation, as a possible guide. The Nalanda project enjoys the support of Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, which should give it a push in one of India’s most dysfunctional states. And the project’s appeal is clear: Nalanda offers both a glimpse of a glorious past and a chance of a bit of neighbourly collaboration.

Opinion

A return to the lunar surface China and India are ready with their plans, this time with automated spacecraft. N. Gopal Raj Friday, Sep 17, 2010 The Hindu OLD FRONTIER, NEW MOVES: This 1969 NASA photograph shows the lunar module, with Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, approaching the Apollo 11 command module. A part of the Earth can be seen in the background. The two Asian giants, China and India, are gearing up for the next phase of lunar exploration. Each of them has successfully sent a scientific probe that photographed and studied Earth's natural satellite while circling it. China now plans to send the Chang'e-2 to the moon at the end of this year. An orbiter like its predecessor, this spacecraft will be equipped with a high-resolution camera that will help identify possible landing areas on the moon. According to a recent report from the Xinhua news agency, it will also “test key soft-landing technologies.” The country then intends to set a rover down on the lunar surface with the Chang'e-3 mission in 2013. A subsequent mission will attempt to bring lunar samples back to earth four years later. Meanwhile, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is pursuing the Chandrayaan-2 project. This mission, which is currently scheduled for 2013, envisages having both an orbiter circling the moon as well as a lander taking a rover down to the lunar surface. The rover will then trundle about and study the composition of lunar rocks and soil. ISRO recently announced details of seven instruments that would be carried on the orbiter and rover. India and Russian help India has chosen to take Russian help for this ambitious project. The space agencies of the two countries signed an agreement to work together on the Chandrayaan-2 mission when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Russia in 2007. The original idea was that India would be responsible for the orbiter while Russia would provide the lander and the rover. But as things have worked out, Russia will be making only the lander while ISRO will develop both the orbiter and the rover. The tie-up is intended to take advantage of the wealth of experience that the Russians have with automated missions to the moon. The epic space race between the U.S. and the [former] U.S.S.R. is best remembered for America's triumph in putting a dozen of its astronauts on the moon. What is

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often forgotten is the latter's belated successes with automated missions involving two rovers and three sample-return missions. The Soviet Union's programme for manned exploration of the moon never received the sort of wholehearted government backing that the U.S. once did. It was also undermined by feuds between key design bureaus in the Soviet space programme. As a result, a rocket powerful enough to carry humans to the moon could not be developed in time. (See “Soviet Union in the race to the Moon”, The Hindu, July 30, 2009.) Unmanned exploration Watching the steady progress of the U.S. effort which they could not match, the Soviet leaders and space community turned to unmanned exploration. If their cosmonauts could not go to the moon, perhaps some of their tasks could be carried out by automated rovers and sample-return spacecraft. Their Luna 9 spacecraft had, after all, been the first to achieve a soft-landing on the moon in January 1966. But even automated exploration proved problematic. In 1969, when Apollo 11 landed the first astronauts on the moon, Soviet space scientists and engineers were struggling with one failure after another. The new Proton rocket, which was used to launch the automated lunar spacecraft, had a troubled start. (It went on to become a reliable launch vehicle that is still in use today.) A Proton rocket carrying the first lunar rover blew up less than a minute after launch in February 1969. In June the same year, a spacecraft to bring back a sample of lunar soil was launched, as space historian Asif A. Siddiqi puts it, to “reclaim some glory for the Soviet space programme.” But an upper stage of the rocket failed and the spacecraft wound up in the Pacific Ocean. Another sample-return mission was launched in mid-July that year, just three days before the Apollo 11 astronauts left the earth. After successfully entering lunar orbit, Luna 15, however, crashed into the side of a mountain as it was descending to the surface. Three subsequent Soviet sample-return missions were also unsuccessful. Finally Luna 16 landed safely on the moon's Sea of Fertility in September 1970. Less than an hour after landing, an automatic drill took a sample of lunar soil, which was then deposited in a return capsule. After successfully lifting off from the moon, the capsule brought some 105 grams of lunar soil back to the Soviet Union. The rovers Another impressive achievement soon followed. Luna 17 took a rover, known as Lunokhod 1, to the moon in November 1970. The Lavochkin Design Bureau, which built both the sample-return and rover spacecraft, used a lander that was essentially common to the both. The sample-return mission had an ascent stage fixed on top of the lander. Likewise, the rover too was strapped to the lander, which was equipped with ramps so that the wheeled vehicle could roll off on to the lunar surface. “The mobile Lunokhod 1 was an extremely sophisticated, self-contained explorer, although its appearance prompted observers to describe it as a bathtub on wheels with two large protruding eyes,” remarked Nicholas Johnson in his book on Soviet lunar and planetary exploration.

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Lunokhod 1 was an outstanding success, Dr. Siddiqi has pointed out in his book on the Soviet efforts during the space race. It operated for 10 months, during which time it travelled over 10 km, taking 20,000 photographs and over 200 panoramas of the lunar surface. During that period, it withstood the intense cold of the lunar night and the searing heat of the lunar day. Subsequently, Luna 21 took another rover, the Lunokhod 2, to the moon in 1973. The Soviets also successfully carried out two further sample-return missions, in 1972 and again in 1976. Since then, no more rovers have roamed around on the moon. Nor have there been any more sample-return missions. Now, China and India are seeking to return once again with automated spacecraft to explore the lunar landscape.

Pune shifts to top gear as automobile hub The global financial meltdown only underscores the importance of cost control and cost

effectiveness for auto manufacturers

RAMNATH SUBBU Sep 17, 2010 The Hindu The metamorphosis of Pune city over recent decades from a verdant, easy-paced abode of choice for retirees to a bustling metropolis has been complete and today, although it is a major information technology hub, the automotive sector occupies pride of place as the prime mover behind the rapid development of Pune and surrounding areas. Detroit of India The proliferation of automobile manufacturing units and component suppliers that populate the landscape of outer Pune, particularly Pimpri-Chinchwad, Chakan and Talegaon areas have increasingly earned it the sobriquet of being the ‘Detroit of India' and it continues to elicit interest and attract investments despite challenges from the newer auto hubs dotting outer Chennai and Gurgaon near Delhi. The entry of the heavyweights of Indian automobile industry — Tata Motors and Bajaj Auto — in the 1960s resulted in and subsequently escalated the mushrooming of allied industries that catered to the outsourcing requirements of these principals. While the first original equipment manufacturer (OEM) was Mercedes-Benz in the 1990s through a joint venture with the Tatas and later on its own, others followed suit but only in trickles. However, in this millennium, global heavyweights like General Motors, Fiat, Volkswagen and more recently India's largest utility vehicle maker Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) have committed large investments in this region and their entry seems to have opened the floodgates for auto investments here. The global financial meltdown only underscored the importance of cost control and cost-effectiveness for auto manufacturers and further re-affirmed their decision to move to cheaper manufacturing locations available in India, particularly as quality was not going to be compromised. Today, the Pune automobile landscape includes the ‘who's who' of Indian and increasingly international automobile majors. Tata Motors is the largest followed by Bajaj Auto, Force Motors, Mahindra Two-Wheelers, Mercedes-Benz, GM, JCB Construction Equipment, Volkswagen, M&M, Premier Motors and Fiat. Inflow of investment

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Speaking to The Hindu, Anant Sardeshmukh, Executive Director General, Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industry & Agriculture (MCCIA), a nodal body for investment in the region, said there was a surge in the period between 2006 and 2008 when around Rs.12,000 crore was spent on projects in the region. “However,” he said, “the period between 2008 and 2013 will see the inflow of around Rs.40,000 crore in terms of investment in this sector. “Simultaneously, there is substantial investment proposed from auto ancillary and component manufacturers and over the same period an investment of around Rs.10,000 crore is proposed by them,” Mr. Sardeshmukh said. The new projects include the Fiat-Tata joint venture at Ranjangaon with a proposed investment of Rs.4,000 crore, GM's Rs.1,400-crore investment with a further Rs.900-crore expansion, Volkswagen's project of Rs.3,800 crore, Mercedes' Rs.250 crore investment and Mahindra & Mahindra planning a huge Rs.5,0000-crore investment by 2012. Bajaj Auto proposes Rs.300-crore investment in two-three wheelers and a further Rs.1,000-crore investment in the car plant. Among large auto suppliers are Cummins Engines which set up shop in the 1960s with Kirloskar and later alone, Kirloskar Oil Engines and Bridgestone's new Chakan plant for tyres with an investment of Rs.2,600 crore. Commitment by MNCs In the last 18 months, large multinational auto component suppliers like ZF Group of Germany have committed around Rs.50 crore, Prembo of Italy is setting up a Rs.100-crore disc brakes facility and Norma of Germany plans to invest euro 3 million (about Rs.18 crore). Skilled manpower In addition to the auto OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), Pune has a range of Tier-1, Tier-2 and infrastructure suppliers, including Bharat Forge, among the top forging companies in the world and Sandvik's large cutting tools facility. Arun Firodia, Chairman, Kinetic Group, said easy availability of skilled manpower is the prime reason for the rapid development of the auto sector in Pune. Pune's USP “At present, one lakh engineers are working in and around Pune, a figure probably unmatched anywhere in the world. Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) has created mega industrial estates at Pimpri-Chinchwad, Chakan and Talegaon on a scale that too is unmatched. These have fostered the growth of automobile companies. As automobile companies grow, it is but natural that auto component industry flourishes in Pune.” Concurring with this view, Mr. Sardeshmukh said, “This region has a steady supply of trained technical manpower with more than 1,000 technical and engineering institutions dotting the landscape. There is a steady availability of a 3-lakh-strong qualified manpower here.” Mr. Sardeshmukh said the development of Pune's unique selling proposition (USP) is not far to seek if one looks at the history of this region's industry. “The seeds were sown in the 1960s when Bajaj and the Tatas invested heavily in their facilities in the region and this fostered the mushrooming of first generation technocrat promoted units to cater

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to the needs of these facilities. These have developed to such an extent that the small and medium enterprises (SME) segment today can fulfil any component requirement of the auto sector now, irrespective of the scale.” What was lacking though is a focussed vendor development programme and access to quality technical training. That need is now being directly addressed by interested parties including an aggressive approach by the state government. The first automobile cluster is Pune although it is not really a cluster because all the players are not located in a particular demarcated area. State support “In fact, Pune was the first to have manufacturing clusters with one being auto and the other being white goods. There has been funding from the State government and units have been encouraged to increase capacity and upgrade technology. “Recently, a joint programme for supplier development was tied up with UNIDO and the Italian Government.” There is a general lament about the quality of power in Pune city, although there is no doubt that infrastructure in the region is still good compared to other parts of the country. “The city was the first in the State to give a ‘Pune model' of buying power from the open market about three years ago and it has been implemented successfully. The Maharashtra Government is in the process of formulating a new industrial policy the first draft of which is expected to be announced in the next two months. “Industry is confident that issues like quality of power and other infrastructure bottlenecks will be adequately addressed in the policy,” said Mr. Sardeshmukh. Mr. Firodia felt that although Chennai and Gurgaon are catching up as alternatives as auto hubs, the USP of Pune would continue to “attract the best talent from all parts of India and all parts of the world, thanks to its salubrious climate, fabulous education facilities and superb cosmopolitan cultural scene.” Opinion

China-Africa: Evaluating a growing partnership It covers all facets, helping China to project itself as a global power Rajiv Bhatia September 17, 2010 The Hindu PAST AND PRESENT: The ties of history and modernity ... (Clockwise, from top left) Chinese and Kenyan archaeologists at the Mambrui ruins near Mombasa, Kenya, where Chinese artefacts have been found, the signs of ancient trade. The Nairobi-Thika highway project, partly funded by the Kenyan and Chinese Governments.

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The journalist Justus Ondari wrote recently in Kenya's Daily Nation: “The Chinese influence, in the form of its people, investment and business, is sweeping across the African continent like a wildfire.” If China is ‘a complex actor' and Africa ‘a complex continent', it follows that their relationship is complex too. A staunch opponent of colonialism, China is now being projected by some as manifesting neo-colonialist tendencies. Is the China link a blessing or bane for Africans? While this debate unfolds elsewhere, it does not receive much notice in India. But it should, because expanding China-Africa relations have global implications. A look at the past Western media tend to suggest that China has appeared suddenly on the African stage in recent years. China's publicists would have us believe that the relationship has ancient origins. Neither view is accurate. The only important chapter in the history of these relations pre-dating the rise of Communist China pertains to Zeng He. Hailed as ‘the Chinese Columbus', he undertook eight voyages during the 15th Century to the region west of China, at the behest of Ming Emperor Cheng Zu. A few of these journeys took him across the Indian Ocean to Africa's eastern and southern seaboard, e.g. Mogadishu, Malindi and Madagascar. His aim was to explore and to spread China's influence and trade. Chinese scholars stress that conquest and colonialism did not result from them. Cut to the 20th century. China-Africa relations were initially driven by common experience and ideology: shared subjugation by the West; a resolve to end colonialism and to launch economic development. Afro-Asian unity was forged at the Bandung Conference, with Nehru's India introducing the new China to African leaders. In 1956, Egypt became the first African country to establish diplomatic relations with China. Premier Zhou Enlai's historic visits to Africa in 1963 and 1964 created a lasting impact. The ‘One China' policy took quick strides: in 1960 only five of 22 independent African states recognised the People's Republic of China; in 2010, only four of 54 African states maintain relations with Taiwan. China began extending economic and military assistance to African countries, but the Cultural Revolution introduced aberrations. China's inclination ‘to export revolution' amounted to violating its own traditional adherence to the principle of non-interference. From the early 1980s, China's policy marked a shift from an emphasis on ‘war and revolution' to ‘peace and development'. Economic cooperation assumed greater importance. During the 1990s, visits to Africa by top Chinese leaders became progressively more frequent and extensive. Since 1991, the Chinese foreign minister follows the tradition to inaugurate his annual calendar of foreign visits by first visiting a few African capitals. Forum on cooperation Sino-African relations have been institutionalised in the past decade through the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). It has traversed through four important milestones, namely three ministerial conferences (held in 2000, 2003 and 2009) and the climax in 2006 — “China's Africa Year” — when the ministerial conference was followed by the first summit in Beijing, attended by leaders of 48 African countries. Two FOCAC documents stand out. The Beijing Summit Declaration proclaimed solemnly “the establishment of a new type of strategic partnership between China and Africa featuring political equality and mutual trust, economic win-win cooperation and cultural exchanges.” The Sharm-el-

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Sheikh Declaration (of November 2009) stressed that Sino-African cooperation had produced “fruitful results”, making it “a good example of South-South cooperation.” Relations today China's relations with Africa cover all facets — political, defence, economic and other areas of cooperation. Shared perceptions on regional and international issues have been highlighted repeatedly. The growing China link has helped put a global focus on Africa. Similarly, relations with Africa help China to project itself as a global power. New assertiveness of the Chinese Navy in the western Indian Ocean is noteworthy. China seems to be working actively to advance the FOCAC process. Over two dozen Confucius Institutes have been established in 18 African countries. China-Africa trade, valued at $10 billion in 2000, shot up to $107 billion in 2008. China, to a large extent, imports minerals and crude oil, and exports manufactured goods. Currently, China imports over 20 per cent of its oil requirements from Africa. Over 1,600 Chinese companies have investment or an operational presence on the continent today. However, Chinese investment is barely 10 per cent of accumulated investment by foreign countries in Africa. Seven special economic zones being set up by China in five African countries have drawn special attention. The ‘China in Africa' phenomenon has triggered conflicting reactions and assessments. Supporters have argued that China's approach is to promote mutual benefit and a balance of advantages. China does not interfere in internal affairs nor impose conditions and refrains from neo-colonialist actions. Unlike the West, it did not embark on colonialism, impose its religion and languages, conquer territory and practice slave trade. China has only challenged the exploitative Western dominance of Africa. It has contributed to Africa's integration, enhancement of Africa's importance in world affairs as well as to rise in prices of African commodities and growth in Africa's GDP. On the other hand, critics have argued that China is an ‘exploitative' and ‘extractive' mercantilist power with its own neo-colonialist inclinations. It buys raw materials and sells manufactured products. Its economic policy damages Africa's development, delays industrialisation, ruins local industry, does not involve a transfer of technology nor value addition, contributing very little to employment as China prefers to bring its own labour. Besides, the quality of Chinese goods is poor. China jeopardises good governance in Africa, supports dictatorships, corruption, and a violation of human rights (as in Sudan and Zimbabwe). China is basically interested in Africa's natural resources, not in its long-term development. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere between the two positions. In theory, China's engagement could be beneficial or harmful, with the actual mix varying from country to country. It may largely depend on how an African government manages to enhance benefits and reduce harmful effects. The India angle India's relations with Africa have been deeper, stronger and more substantive for long. The two sides were linked through trade, cultural influences, migration as well as shared struggles, ideals and icons throughout the 19th and the 20th Centuries. However, in recent years, the gap between India's and China's profile in Africa has been widening, to our disadvantage. Perhaps China is now a decade ahead of India.

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Denying the fact of rivalry with China is not a feasible option. Many Africans are convinced that the two Asian powers are vying for Africa's attention, assets, markets and support for their political agenda. Neither is it desirable to merely lament nor to suggest copying or ‘beating China in its own game.' A balanced view indicates that India should leverage its many natural advantages and core strengths. The most sensible choice would be to closely monitor China's activities in Africa and to intensify and broaden our cooperation with African countries selectively. Recently a thoughtful African ambassador in Delhi told me: “China is doing more, but India is doing better.” China's presence in Africa is set to expand. It is time for India to enhance its engagement wisely and rapidly. A sustained combination of greater activism, sensitivity and synergy is essential. Then, India may be seen as doing both better and more.

Economic News

TAPMI sets up R&D unit in 'Blue Ocean Strategy' September 20, 2010 Business Standard

Chennai/ Bangalore: T A Pai Management Institute (TAPMI), a Mangalore-headquartered management school, has launched the India Blue Ocean Strategy Research Centre in collaboration with Blue Ocean Strategy Regional Centre, Malaysia, to train corporates, students and faculty members for various management schools. “We believe that this institute will help industry, student community and faculty for better understanding of the market strategies in the wake of ever-changing market dynamics,” Saji Gopinath, director of TAPMI, said. Blue Ocean Strategy is a system that makes competition irrelevant by creating new market spaces through simultaneous achievement of differentiation and low cost. This strategy is about moving away from the traditional approach with existing competition. “This centre will focus on increasing the adaptability of Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS) to different industry segments in the country and will undertake research and education services in collaboration with our Malaysian counterpart along with Manipal education,” he said. This strategy proposes six principles that a company can use to formulate and execute its strategy. These principles help to reconstruct market boundaries, focus on the big picture to reach beyond existing demand, to get the strategic sequence right and overcome organisational hurdles to build execution into strategy through education, research and consultancy.

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“The cornerstone of blue ocean strategy is ‘value innovation’ and a blue ocean is created when a company achieves value innovation that creates value simultaneously for both the buyer and the company,” Peter Tan of the Blue Ocean Strategy Institute, Malaysia, said. Referring to the relevance of it to the Indian industry, he said Indian industry needs to enter a market through innovative products and services as well as redefine the traditional beliefs and boundaries. “Indian industries are facing severe competition from companies both locally and globally, and it is necessary for them to identify large markets where competition is irrelevant. In today’s market, it is necessary to invest in large untapped market for increasing profitability,” Tan added. He also said that with the advent of globalisation, prospects in most established markets was shrinking with falling margins. “It’s important to invent new market and create demand in these markets to stay competitive in the long-run,” he said.

Govt approves simplified labour law September 17, 2010 Business Standard

New Delhi: The Cabinet today cleared a simplified version of a labour Bill that will benefit small business establishments employing up to 40 workers in maintaining registers and submitting returns electronically. According to the decision, the Labour Laws (Exemption from Furnishing Returns and Maintaining Registers by Certain Establishments) Amendment and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill, 2005, will be replaced with Labour Laws (Exemption from Furnishing Returns and Maintaining Registers by Certain Establishments) Amendment Bill, 2010, in the coming session of Parliament. In order to make it easier for very small establishments employing up to nine workers and small establishments employing between 10 and 19 workers, the government had earlier allowed them to maintain just one and three registers, respectively. They were allowed to file one return each. But now these organisations will be required to maintain two registers. Registers/records can be maintained in computer, floppy, diskette or on other electronic media and return submitted through e-mail. The Labour Laws (Exemption from Furnishing Returns and Maintaining Registers by Certain Establishments) Amendment and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill, 2005 was introduced in the Rajya Sabha to expand the coverage of the Act. Following discussions in the Standing Committee, procedures have been simplified and a new bill has been cleared by the Cabinet after permitting the labour ministry to withdraw the old one. Other Decisions

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The government approved the introduction of the Multi-State Cooperative Societies (Amendment) Bill, which is aimed at improving the accountability of cooperatives, in Parliament. A revival plan for the National Film Development Corporation with fresh infusion of Rs 3 crore was approved by the government. Besides, the outstanding government loan of Rs 19.77 crore, along with accumulated interest of Rs 8.63 crore on it, will be converted into equity. With an estimated 170,000 pilgrims scheduled to go for Haj this year, Air India would coordinate air operations from 21 cities, Bhopal and Goa being added to the list of embarkation points. The arrangement was approved by the Cabinet on Thursday. Agriculture insurance plan The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) today approved the Modified National Agricultural Insurance Scheme to make it more comprehensive and farmer friendly. The modified scheme aims at helping increased number of farmers in stabilising farm income at the time of crop failure on account of natural calamities. The Ministry of Agriculture has been implementing the National Agricultural Insurance Scheme as a central sector scheme since the 1999-2000 Rabi season to insure the farming community against these risks. CCEA also approved Rs 935 crore as the revised cost estimate for implementing the ‘E-Courts’ project. The cost approved earlier for the project in 2007 was Rs 441.8 crore. E-Courts is one of the mission mode projects of e-governance under the National e-Governance Plan.

Kerala Tourism to launch global campaign


Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Tourism will soon launch a global publicity blitz to establish its stature as one of the top tourist destinations of the world. It will be launched in London at the end of September through the world premiere of a new ad film. Conceived by Stark Communications and directed by acclaimed film-maker Prakash Varma of Vodafone ZooZoo ad fame, the new campaign aims to make Kerala a ‘must-visit' destination for travellers to experience its brilliance and top-rate hospitality. Superbrand An official spokesman quoted Mr Varma as saying that he was immensely proud to be involved in the campaign. “Kerala is a Superbrand and a highly acclaimed destination and I wanted to be part of the project straightaway.” Following the premiere in London, the campaign will hit cinemas in the UK with the screening of Eat Pray Love. A runaway top-charter, the film starring Julia Roberts is based on the real-life story of how an American divorcee and writer Liz Gilbert spent a year travelling in Italy, India and Bali in search of spiritual fulfilment. Major Markets The Kerala Tourism campaign will also roll out in other major markets in Europe, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland. A focus area of the

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campaign will also be domestic tourists, a fast-growing segment for tourism in Kerala. Kerala Tourism had staged road shows in all metros and major Indian cities earlier this year. In 2009, Kerala Tourism had launched an innovative campaign by wrapping 120 taxis in the UK in attention-grabbing imagery of Kerala. Dramatic Growth The campaign was a huge hit with the British, who account for a third of the 6.5 lakh foreigners visiting the State every year. Kerala's growth in tourism has been phenomenal and dramatic. Today, it is a globally acclaimed tourist destination, voted as ‘One of the Ten Paradises in the World' by the National Geographic Traveller in 2000. Last month, subscribers of the online travel portal SmartTravelAsia.com voted Kerala ahead of Phuket and Bali as Asia's best destination. Most Preferred Early this week, the State was adjudged the ‘most preferred destination' in India at the CNBC Awaaz Awards 2010, while Kerala Tourism walked away with the Best Tourism Board award. Last year, the National Geographic Traveller had listed the placid backwaters of Kerala as one of the 133 ‘World's Greatest Places', ahead of even the iconic Taj Mahal.

Russia, India in pact to develop biotech network September 15, 2010 The Hindu Business Line Eighth edition of Bio-Asia to be held in February. Hyderabad: An agreement on Russia-India Biotech Network (RIBN) was signed here today to serve as a dedicated platform to help facilitate collaboration between Russian and Indian biotech companies. The agreement was signed and exchanged in the presence of the Chief Minister, Mr K. Rosaiah by Prof. Raif Vasilov, President, Russian Biotechnology Society and CEO of Russian Biotechnology Association, and Dr. B.S. Bajaj, Convenor of Bio-Asia 2011 and Secretary of Federation of Biotech Associations (FABA). Commenting on the development, the Chief Minister said that this platform will prove to be a very useful tool to accelerate the cross- border collaboration between the two countries. The first phase of this initiative is expected to be operational by February coinciding with Bio-Asia, Prof. Raif Vasilov said. Coinciding with the signing of the agreement, the Chief Minister today announced that the eighth edition of Bio-Asia, a global bio-business forum will be held during February 21-24 at Hyderabad and serve as a platform to accelerate the growth of the biotech sector.

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Bio-Asia 2011 will feature multi-track conferences, trade shows, networking conferences and other satellite events. The previous edition of Bio-Asia held this year in February was witness to participation of over 4,000 delegates from 21 countries. The event bought together over 160 companies and recorded over 800 onsite business-to-business interactions. The Chief Minister said the State has recognised the importance of biotech sector and has made efforts to provide right environment for its growth by providing necessary infrastructure and encouraging biotech companies offering them incentives

India becomes the seventh largest vehicle producing country globally September 14, 2010 IBEF New Delhi: The government has claimed that the country has become the seventh largest vehicle producing nation in the world, six years ahead of the set target. According to Mr B S Meena, Secretary, Ministry of Heavy Industry, "When we were making the Auto Mission Plan (AMP) in 2006, we had projected India to become the seventh largest vehicle producing country in the world by 2016. We have already achieved this milestone good six years ahead of the set target." Meena added during April-August 2009-10, the cumulative production of vehicles grew at 32.4 per cent over the year ago period. "The passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles and two-wheeler segments have all recorded impressive growth rates of 32 per cent, 49 per cent and 31 per cent, respectively, during this period," said Meena. He further added that Indian passenger vehicle market is estimated to grow to 9 million units by 2020, while the two-wheeler market is likely to reach 30 million units. "The realisation of these volumes would position India as one of the top five vehicle producing countries in the world by 2020 with the domestic consumption growing by 4-folds to USD 120 billion," Meena said. Furthermore, according to Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), the country vehicle production has increased to 14.1 million units in 2009-10, a jump of over 25 per cent from 11.2 million units in the previous fiscal.

Suryachakra unit teams up with German co for solar projects September 14, 2010 The Hindu Business Line Hyderabad: Suryachakra Power Corporation Ltd through its subsidiary Suryachakra Power Venture Pvt Ltd (SVPL) has entered into shareholders and share subscription agreements with Flagsol GmbH, Germany for setting up grid connected Solar Thermal Power Projects, under the Phase-I of Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM). Following this arrangement between the two companies, bids will be submitted shortly to NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Ltd, the nodal agency facilitating setting up of solar power projects, by the Suryachakra Power Ventures, the special purpose vehicle. The SPV is a 50:50 equity partnership by SPVL and Flagsol formed for setting up the projects. The company will enter into a power purchase deal for a period of 25 years.

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The company is in the process of establishing a 50 MW solar power project in Gujarat through Suryachakra MSM Solar India Pvt. Ltd. and a 5 MW unit in Chhattisgarh through Aasrit MSM Solar Energy Pvt. Ltd. According to a statement filed with the stock exchanges, this is in addition to the Group's earlier registered two projects of 5 MW each concentrated solar thermal projects under demonstration scheme of Government of India.

Taiwan keen to tap Indian electronics, auto parts sectors

Plans to increase trade through better marketing.

September 13 2010, The Hindu Business Line Chennai: India is the next major market of focus for Taiwanese companies in the electronic, machinery and auto component sectors. While the Taiwan Formosa Industrial Park in the SEZ at Sri City in Andhra Pradesh (ground breaking function for this was held on Thursday) is a major boost in this direction, a couple of Taiwanese companies are planning joint ventures in India , according to Ms Maggie Liu, Manager, Exhibition Department, Taiwan has been strong with Asian countries such as China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia but not with Taiwan. Ms Liu, who was part the Taiwanese delegation at the EMMA Expo India 2010 – the Best Sourcing Fair from Taiwan, said India's trade “We want to change this. There is now a growing interest among Taiwanese companies to tap the large Indian domestic market right from electronic components to finished goods and machinery,” she said. Bilateral trade The bilateral trade between Taiwan and India was around $6,700 million. This, Ms Liu said, was not even half of Taiwan's trade with Malaysia or Indonesia. “Despite having a strong presence in the electronics products, we are yet to penetrate the Indian market. This could be due to cultural issue as there are a large number of Indian origin people living in Malaysia or Indonesia or due to lack of marketing,” she said. This year's EMMA Expo with 180 exhibitors has been a ‘great success.' The exhibitors are happy with the response from the type of visitors who were mostly ‘serious trade officials than just common people.' When compared to last year, the number of visitors this year grew by nearly 20 per cent to over 6,000 people. This was despite the fact that the exhibition was held in the mid week than the usual week end, she said. On display The three-day expo, which concluded today at the Chennai Trade Centre, showcased 35 brands and 158 products including the first hand products that have won Taiwan Excellence awards. Some of the leading Taiwanese companies in the expo were ASUSTek, D-Link, China Motor Corporation and Lien Chief Machinery. Among the products on display were the award winning Sunonwealth cooling fan, claimed to be the world's thinnest and can be used in miniature mechanisms. There was the all-in-one desktop router

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made by D-Link that combines the functions of a wireless Internet router for network-attached storage that also works as a print server, said Mr Ryan J.Y. Su, Image Enhancement Plan Promotion Section of the Council. “We are very happy with the response,” he said. Taiwan companies are technology leaders making nearly 75 per cent of the word's personal computers; about half of the world's flat panel displays and around 30 per cent of the world's semiconductors. Innovative products such as electronic storybooks for children, digital readers, smart phones and 3D projects were at the expo, he said.

HAL, Russian firms seal transport plane venture

September 13, 2010 The Hindu Business Line Bangalore: Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd and its two Russian partners have signed a shareholders' agreement to set up a joint venture that will develop and build a new, modern multi-role transport aircraft (MTA) for their respective air forces. The joint venture company will be based in Bangalore and the subsidiary in Moscow. The plane will be built to ship defence personnel and cargo. The defence PSU will equally share the work and cost of around Rs 2,900 crore with United Aircraft Corporation and marketing arm Rosoboron export, HAL said in a release here. The planned MTA will be a modern fly-by-wire aircraft with two engines, capacity to carry 15-20-tonnes, a cruise speed of 800 kph and can cover distances of 2500-2700 km. This is HAL's 11th joint venture. A senior official said the MTA was slated to be ready by 2016 according to an earlier plan. The schedule is to be worked out.

Passenger car sales grew by 33 per cent in August 2010: SIAM

September 10, 2010 IBEF New Delhi: Indian auto industry sales broke records for the second month consecutively in August 2010 on the back of good monsoons, a positive customer sentiment, and low borrowing rates. According to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers' (SIAM) data, the overall sales rose by 25 per cent to record 1,263,000 units in August 2010 - highest ever for a single month after July 2010. Specifically, sales were highest for the passenger vehicle and two-wheeler segments in August 2010. "The main reason for the strong sales is that the interest rates have been stable and consumer confidence has been high. There is excitement about the new launches, while rural sales have risen on good monsoons," as per Vishnu Mathur, Director-General, SIAM. The sales of passenger car grew by 33 per cent to 160,000 units in August 2010 over the corresponding period in 2009, while the larger passenger vehicle segment grew by 34 per cent to 204,000 units. Maruti Suzuki's sales rose by 32 per cent, recording its best-ever month on sales of 92,674 units, while Tata Motors' and Hyundai's sales rose 40 per cent and 17 per cent, respectively. Similarly, the two wheeler sales rose 23 per cent in August 2010 to 957,000 units, with Hero Honda recording sales of over 400,000 units, while Bajaj Auto's sales rose 72 per cent to 209,000 units,

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and TVS Motors' sales grew 29 per cent to 148,000 units. Furthermore, sales increased by 28 per cent to 52,030 units for the commercial vehicles segment. Tata Motors posted a 20 per cent growth in sales to 30,469 units. Three-wheeler sales rose 27 per cent to 49,732 units, even as Bajaj Auto posted a 34 per cent growth to 21,219 units. Piaggio Vehicles sold 17,964 units, marking a 7 per cent growth. Public sector company Scooters India Ltd posted a 36 per cent rise in sales. With demand outgrowing the supply in the market, Mathur said the overall market growth for 2010-11 is most likely to exceed SIAM's initial prediction of 10-14 per cent.

Growing coastal shipping accounts for 27% of traffic

September 10, 2010 The Hindu Business Line Chairman highlights Tuticorin Port's contribution. Madurai: Mr A. Subbiah, Chairman in-charge of Tuticorin Port Trust, in a statement here said that Tuticorin Port, since inception in 1974, has facilitated coastal shipping by offering the lowest tariff for salt from Tuticorin. During 1999-2000 and 2009-10, the share of coastal traffic was about 42.32 lakh tonnes and 65.03 lakh tonnes to the overall traffic of 99.93 lakh tonnes and 237.87 lakh tonnes respectively. Accounting for 27 per cent of the total traffic, coastal shipping has grown at 4.39 per cent CAGR (cumulative annual growth rate) during 1999-2000 to 2000-01, he said. He further said that at Tuticorin Port, thermal coal, petroleum coke, iron and steel material, salt, industrial coal are some of the major import cargo unloaded for coastal shipping trade. Sulphuric acid, phosphoric acid, gypsum, ilmenite sand, construction material, caustic soda lye and containerised cargo are some of the major export cargo loaded via coastal shipping at Tuticorin Port. For the year 2009-10, he continued, the Port handled 65.03 lakh tonnes of coastal cargo primarily consisting of thermal coal, containerised cargo, sulphuric acid, phosphoric acid, industrial coal, pet coke, caustic soda lye. The Port also handled about 71,979 TEUs in 2009-10 in coastal shipping. The coastal container traffic from Mundra and Pipavav ports account for the major share at 43,614 TEUs and 11,724 TEUs respectively. The coastal movement to Kandla Port is about 5,053 TEUs and Okha Port is about 1012 TEUs. The total share of ports from Gujarat is about 62,585 TEUs out of 71,979 TEUs handled. The exporters from Gujarat have found coastal shipping from the Gujarat Port to Tuticorin Port quite economical because of the excellent facilities and productivity of the terminal at Tuticorin and Gujarat Ports. Due to the concessional tariff given by Tuticorin Port for coastal traffic, coastal movement of cargo is expected to pick up in the years to come, he added.

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Mobile subscriber base touched 652 million mark in July 2010

September 09, 2010 IBEF New Delhi: The number of Indian mobile subscribers witnessed a robust growth as it touched the 652.42 million mark in July 2010, with an addition of 16.92 million connections, as per the official data. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the wireless user base rose by 2.66 percent to 652.42 million in July 2010 from 635.51 million in June 2010. The total telephone subscriber base has touched 688.38 million. The increase in this category was led by Bharti Airtel, which added 2.6 million users to take its subscriber base to 139.2 million users. Similarly, Reliance Communications added 2.5 million new subscribers, taking its subscriber base to 113.3 million, while Vodafone added 2.4 million connections taking its user base to 111.4 subscribers. Furthermore, as per the data, the broadband subscriber base grew 2.67 percent from 9.45 million in June to 9.77 million in July 2010. However, the wireline segment had a subscriber base of 35.96 million in July 2010, as per TRAI. Industrial production rises by 13.8 per cent in July 2010

Siemens

A giant awakens

Europe’s biggest engineering firm used to be known for two things: making everything but a profit;

and scandal. Now things look very different

September 9th 2010 | From The Economist Print Edition IN A 100-year-old workshop in the centre of Berlin stands a gleaming piece of forged metal, four storeys high. It is thicker than a person’s body and weighs almost as much as Boeing’s new Dreamliner aeroplane. This single, enormous hunk of steel—in essence, a huge bolt—will soon be at the centre of a gas turbine big enough to meet the electricity needs of a small city. Though precisely engineered, the bolt is not especially complex, technically speaking. Perhaps a dozen companies around the world can make something similar. Yet the fact that it stands in Germany’s capital city, at a time when industrial jobs are supposed to be leaving rich countries for cheaper places, serves as a powerful symbol of the resilience of the country’s manufacturing—and of the huge component’s maker, Siemens. The bustle in this factory, where giant robots cut and grind the huge disks that go into gas turbines, points to a remarkable recovery in demand for German goods, not least Siemens’s, from Europe’s deepest recession since the second world war. For much of this year German manufacturing orders have been about one-quarter higher than in 2009. Those from abroad have been 30% up. Orders for

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Siemens’s continuing businesses were 16% higher at the end of June than a year earlier. Operating profit for the quarter jumped by 40%. Siemens’s growth spurt has even placed it ahead of its archrival, General Electric (GE), long the world’s dominant industrial company, on some measures. In comparable sales, calculates Martin Prozesky, an analyst at BernsteinResearch, Siemens is now bigger than the company that made a fetish of being one of the top two in a market or getting out. As chart 1 shows, GE’s total sales in the first half of this year were 50% bigger than Siemens’s. But take out GE Capital, the American conglomerate’s financial-services arm, and Siemens’s small finance business (used almost entirely for vendor finance), and the two firms are about the same size. Remove GE’s media holdings, and Siemens takes the lead. In areas of more or less direct overlap—which would exclude GE’s jet-engine business, too—Siemens’s sales are 50% greater than GE’s. In market capitalisation, GE ($165 billion) is still almost twice the size of Siemens (€68 billion, or $87 billion): no surprise, given GE’s broader range. But in 2007 it was more than three times as big. The narrowing of the gap has something to do with GE’s battering in the financial crisis: investors have been worried chiefly about GE Capital, which diversified into everything from credit cards to subprime mortgages. It has more to do, however, with a revitalisation of the sleepy German giant. For decades Siemens was the problem child of European heavy industry, lurching from profit to loss almost quarter by quarter as big infrastructure projects went wrong or spending spiralled out of control. Even when it made a profit, its margins were too thin to cover its cost of capital—in the early 2000s Siemens’s margins were routinely half those of its main competitors, according to analysts at HSBC. Until the past few years its share price has also lagged behind its rivals’. One reason for this was Siemens’s inability to decide whether to concentrate on making the guts of modern industrial societies, big bits of engineering such as trains, turbines and transformers, or whether it also wanted to make clever, zippy things such as mobile phones and computer chips. Another was an unhealthy reliance on its home market, which in the early 1990s still accounted for almost half of its sales. Its biggest clients were often tied to the state and preferred to buy German. This economic nationalism did Siemens little good: it grew fat and lazy and struggled to compete abroad. “It was a technologically obsessed company that didn’t care much about shareholders or return on capital,” says Mr Prozesky. “It was interested in engineering for engineering’s sake.” Underlying all this, Siemens was badly managed for a long time. Just how badly became clear between 2006 and 2008 when it was embroiled in a mammoth bribery scandal. By the end of it Siemens had paid $1.6 billion in fines for bribing officials and politicians around the world. Investigators found that paying backhanders was so ingrained that the company even had dedicated “cash desks” where employees could fill suitcases with banknotes that would be used to secure contracts. Before 1999, when it was legal for German companies to bribe foreign officials, Siemens claimed tax deductions for what it termed “useful expenditure”. After this was outlawed, Siemens shifted its criminal activities underground, using front companies and middlemen to pay “commissions” on contracts. The practice was extensive and brazen. As much as $67m in crisp, clean cash was merrily packed into suitcases. America’s Department of Justice reckoned that Siemens paid $805m in backhanders between 2001 and 2007. Corporate crime seems to have harmed the company rather than helped it. Managers who approved bribes by signing Post-it notes that could then be peeled off lost any sense of accountability.

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Salesmen, fixated on winning contracts at any cost, forgot how to step away from unprofitable deals. Despite all the palm-greasing, Siemens didn’t make much money. Getting caught was more expensive still. With fees related to internal investigations by an American law firm as well as fines, the direct costs of the scandal came to about $2.6 billion. The non-pecuniary costs included the resignations of Klaus Kleinfeld, a talented chief executive who had already done much to improve the company, and Heinrich von Pierer, chairman of the supervisory board and a former chief executive. Billions were wiped off Siemens’s market value. Employees were panicked into trying to buy a blocking minority stake to save the pride of corporate Germany from the risk of a hostile takeover. And the revelations shook the company’s confidence in its ability to win contracts without paying bribes. “They were caught using steroids to win,” says Nicholas Heymann, an analyst at Sterne Agee, an American broker. “Then suddenly they had to start trying to do it the old-fashioned way.” Few things focus minds quite as well as a crisis. The shock of the corruption scandal provided both the motive and the opportunity for a thorough overhaul of Siemens. With all of the group’s executives at the time potentially tainted, in 2007 the board was forced to look for an outsider to head the company for the first time in its 160-year history. It chose Peter Löscher, a steely Austrian who had spent most of his working life in the pharmaceuticals industry outside Germany. At first glance Mr Löscher’s outsider status seemed to be his sole merit as the boss of Europe’s largest engineering firm. A re-engineering job Within a few months he had completely reshaped the company’s management structure. “One of my first sentences in the company was speed, speed, speed,” Mr Löscher says, summing up a pace of change that might have been impossible to ram through without the bribery scandal. Half of the old operational management team was moved out. The company’s 11 divisions were reduced to three “sectors”. And in place of management by committee and consensus, Mr Löscher gave each of his sectoral heads full responsibility for their businesses. “It is about aligning accountability and responsibility so that at the end of the day I look into your eyes and say: you are responsible,” he says. This cut to the heart of an issue that had bedevilled the company under previous chief executives. “At the core of all the problems they had was a lack of accountability,” says Andreas Willi of JPMorgan. “There were attempts at change before, and partial successes, but it was always a case of two steps forward, one step back.” Right at the start, Mr Löscher made another big change. He made deep cuts in the group’s portfolio of businesses, to simplify it and to get it out of markets, such as consumer electronics, in which competitors were running rings around it. Within weeks of taking over he had made two big deals, selling VDO, an automotive-electronics business, for €11.4 billion and buying Dade Behring, a medical-diagnostics company, for €5.1 billion. The main purpose of all this has been to build Siemens’s presence in technically advanced infrastructure such as energy and transport, where the barriers to entry are high, or in areas such as health care and energy controls for buildings, where the company can bundle products and services together. This may sound like the tired and unconvincing justifications that conglomerates,

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including Siemens, have long trotted out for why they have disparate businesses. Yet Siemens does seem to be winning business with bundled offers. It can, for example, audit a company’s energy use and suggest improvements that will then pay for themselves out of savings. Many rivals already do this. But few offer to finance the capital spending and guarantee the energy savings, as Siemens does. This approach is producing remarkable results. Take Siemens’s energy division, the biggest contributor to its operating profit. Siemens has long been strong in steam turbines, which are used in coal-fired and nuclear power stations. With its joint-venture partners and licensees it makes almost half the world’s supply, but unless there is a revival of nuclear power, steam turbines are unlikely to provide much growth. As American and European electricity generators switch from coal to cleaner-burning gas, the market for large gas turbines is growing fast. For years Siemens was unable to increase its share much beyond one-third. But in the past few years Siemens has taken the lead with a new family of turbine that is bigger and more efficient than anything else on offer. It can extract more than 60% of the energy from the natural gas it burns; earlier generations seldom got above the mid-50s. Even a few percentage points matter, because fuel accounts for around three-quarters of the lifetime cost of a turbine. For a big turbine, a utility will typically reckon that a gain of two percentage points will save more than €50m-worth of fuel. In other fields Siemens’s progress has been equally dramatic. One is wind energy, a market that analysts at HSBC think will grow by 5.5% a year between 2009 and 2020. In 2005 Siemens had only 5% of the global market. Instead of competing head-on with the leaders, Siemens put its efforts into developing wind turbines that could be anchored at sea, where winds are stronger but conditions are more testing—and where HSBC forecasts growth of 29% a year. It is now the leading supplier of offshore turbines, boasting well over half of that segment, and its share of the total market has increased (see chart 2). In coming years, however, Siemens’s biggest advantage in the energy business will lie not in individual products but in having a range of complementary items that will allow it to bid for almost all parts of the greening of electricity production. One technology is High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC), which is little known but is likely to become the core of what some call green-power superhighways, because it allows huge amounts of electricity to be sent a long way down thinnish cables. In a typical electricity transmission line, as much as 10% of the power will be lost over a distance of 800-1,000km. This limits electricity trading and allows prices to vary a lot, even between neighbouring European countries or American states. HVDC cables can transmit electricity over similar distances with losses as low as 2-3%, making it easier to generate electricity where it is cheapest and send it to where it is needed. In China and India, for instance, a string of new hydroelectric and coal-fired power plants are being built deep in the interior and connected to faraway coastal cities. This technology has been around for a while—in the 1950s it was used to connect Gotland to mainland Sweden—but in recent years the infrastructure it needs has become smaller, cheaper and more reliable. Siemens is not the only provider of HVDC, nor even by some measures the leading one. It is, however, the only one able to supply everything from the generator to the local grid infrastructure leading into a house. That is allowing it to participate in audacious if fanciful ideas such as the Desertec initiative, an attempt to raise funds to build solar power plants in Africa from which electricity could be transmitted under the Mediterranean to Europe.

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In rail, where Siemens had fallen badly behind, it is now rattling along. Its new high-speed trains are not only the world’s fastest but also the most energy-efficient. Even SNCF, France’s national rail company, is considering buying them for the Eurostar, its trans-channel service, rather than patronising Alstom, the French national champion. X-ray vision It may be that Siemens faces its hardest battle for market share in health care, which accounts for about one-sixth of its revenue and one-fifth of its profit. The company was once a clear technological leader in the field (many years ago it absorbed the firm that made the first x-ray tubes in the late 19th century) but by the mid-1990s its share of large markets was slipping steadily. Even though it had some of the best products, its prices were uncompetitive and it was losing money. Siemens has turned the business around partly by going against type: designing products to be cheap rather than technically superior. To do so it enlisted engineers from poor countries such as India and China—not simply because their labour was inexpensive, but also because they were able to focus on building medical machines cheap and rugged enough to be used in the developing world. In this it has taken a leaf out of GEG’s book. Vijay Govindarajan, a professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck business school, spent two years as a professor in residence at GE studying how it was using researchers in India and China to develop cheap, small ultrasound machines appropriate for those markets. The company found that in cutting the cost of a machine from hundreds of thousands of dollars to mere thousands, and reducing their size to that of an iPod, its engineers made products not just for India and China but also for new applications in rich countries, for example at the scene of a road accident. “The conceptual breakthrough was to realise that innovation doesn’t always come from spending more. It can come from spending less,” says Mr Govindarajan. What GE did in ultrasound, cementing its position in that market, Siemens is doing with X-ray machines. The cheap medical equipment from its factories in India and China is being sold not just in developing countries but to community clinics and private hospitals in America too. For Mr Löscher, this reflects the real strength of Siemens. He thinks its competitive advantage lies not solely in its ability to innovate but also in its scale. A good idea or product such as a cheaper X-ray machine or better wind turbine can be plugged into a global system of sales and manufacturing. “You don’t solve big industrial problems [such as climate change] with creativity alone,” he says. “Footprint becomes a major differentiator.” However, that is also true of Siemens’s American rival. In the past GE has shown that a company can be big yet remain innovative—and it could move ahead again. Jeffrey Immelt, GE’s chief executive, has increased its spending on research and development to 5-6% of its industrial revenue, a ratio he calls “pretty world class”, from about 3.5% a few years ago. Siemens spends about the same proportion (see chart 3). “I believe that more investment is going to be required to drive growth,” Mr Immelt told Bloomberg News recently. “It’s the way you build big service revenues and good margin rates.” The extra effort may yield products that will eat into Siemens’s margins and growth.

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Siemens still faces the challenge of regaining investors’ trust. Mr Löscher may see virtue in combining many different businesses into a behemoth, but many of his shareholders do not. The firm still trades at less than the combined values of its parts. For a generation fund managers who bet against Siemens were seldom wrong. Mr Löscher has yet to convince them that this time, things are different. But he has made a good start.

Siemens enters solar, wind power business in India September 09, 2010 The Hindu Business Line Mumbai: Siemens has set up an exclusive office in Vadodara, Gujarat, to expand its renewable energy business in solar and wind power. “The market outlook for renewable energies in India is extremely positive and we see huge potential for the wind and solar business in the near future. Setting up of the Vadodara office marks our entry into the solar and wind business,” said Dr Armin Bruck, Managing Director, Siemens. Siemens said the country is looking to generate up to 20 GW (giga Watts) of solar power by 2022 as part of the National Solar Mission. This presents a great opportunity for Siemens since it has a profound experience in concentrated solar power (CSP) and solar photovoltaic (PV) business. In CSP, Siemens has the parabolic trough technology, which is the most commercially established technology in the world with over 80 per cent of solar thermal plants across the world using it. Further, acquisition of Solel Solar Systems made Siemens the most experienced player in the world in the area of vacuum-based receiver tubes. For solar thermal power plants, Siemens can supply individual components such as solar receiver or steam turbines, entire systems such as the solar field power block or turnkey solutions for parabolic trough power plants. Wind power Siemens said the wind energy market in India was well established. With its generation-based incentives (GBI), the Indian government was further supporting the growth of wind power and the market was expected to grow by two GW annually. With more than 8,700 wind turbines and a total capacity of more than11 GW installed worldwide, Siemens will focus on providing high efficient wind turbines with low life cycle cost to project developers and independent power producers here. Products and solutions for renewable energy form part of Siemens' environmental portfolio. For 2009, revenues from the stream were €23 billion.

TCS No.2 insurance BPO service provider in UK September 03, 2010 Business Standard

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Mumbai: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has become the second-largest insurance business process outsourcing (BPO) provider in the UK, after winning two deals worth £250 million (around Rs1,800 crore). UK-based Capita is the number one player in this space. Diligenta, a subsidiary of TCS, had yesterday announced that it had acquired Unisys Insurance Services (UISL) from Unisys Corporation, in lieu of which the company received business worth £250 million for the next six years. With this, Diligenta won business from Phoenix Group (earlier known as Pearl Group) and Old Mutual International. Phoenix Group is an existing customer of Diligenta. Diligenta is already in talks with a few more insurance players for similar deals. “The cycle time for deals to materialise in case of Diligenta is six months to a year, especially for similar deals. So, in the next 12-18 months, we will have something to share. But winning these deals validates our strategy,” said Phiroz Vandrevala, chairman of Diligenta and executive director at TCS. TCS, the country’s largest information technology (IT) services provider, took almost four years to develop a platform for the insurance segment in the UK. “We did not want to do a lift and drop kind of work in this space, and we wanted to partner in transformational work. It has taken four years to develop the platform. There was skepticism around this platform, but in April this year, we went live with two million policies for Phoenix,” said Vandrevala. For TCS, the UK is an important market, contributing 15 per cent to its revenue. TCS headcount in the UK will touch 2,000. TCS started its journey in the UK insurance space in 2005, when it acquired the life and pension operations of Pearl Group under a 12-year £486-million BPO deal. Diligenta now has three clients — Phoenix Group (additional extension to its earlier contract), Old Mutal International, and National Employee Savings Trust (NEST). In March, TCS had bagged a 10-year £600-million contract from Personal Accounts Delivery Authority (PADA) to administer the NEST scheme, but the deal is under the UK government scanner. Vandrevala said, “So far there is no change. In October, the government will take a final call on the overall IT deals. We will come to know about this only then.” With these new contracts and an existing £486-million deal with Phoenix Group, analysts feel that TCS’ strategy is paying off. “I think TCS took a risk when it signed the deal with the Pearl Group in 2005. But if Indian IT firms want to break into the big league, they will need to take such risks. Also, with this win, they get much more flexibility,” said Vikram Gulati, director, Quantum Step, a UK-based research and advisory firm. With these deals, TCS is also hopeful that the UK subsidiary will break even by the end of this financial year. “The work on the new contracts starts immediately. We are hopeful that by the end of this fiscal, we will break-even,” said Vandrevala. Diligenta reported a net loss of Rs56 crore in 2009-10 on a turnover of Rs456.2 crore, against a net loss of Rs41 crore on revenues of Rs527 crore in 2008-09.

Imperial Auto in joint venture with Italian co


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Pune: Imperial Auto Industries (IAI) and Allevard Rejna Autosuspensions, a company belonging to Italian group Sogefi, have entered into an alliance to manufacture elastic suspension components for the domestic and overseas automotive companies. Allevard-IAI Suspensions Pvt Ltd, a 51:49 joint-venture between the two companies respectively, will initially undertake manufacturing of stabiliser bar and torsion bar for passenger cars and utility vehicles. These components are critical parts of the suspension system. Production will begin this month from IAI's existing manufacturing facility in Pune, with simultaneous setting up of a state-of-the-art production unit in Chakan. The new plant, which will involve an investment of Rs 25 crore is expected to go on stream by mid 2011. Mr Emanuele Bosio, Chief Executive, Sogefi Group, said: “The new joint-venture is an important step in the development and growth of Sogefi presence in this market. Our objective is to become one of the main producers of suspension components in India.” Founded in 1969, IAI is a manufacturer and exporter in fluid transmission products with manufacturing at 15 locations across India. Italy- based Sogefi Group specialises in filter systems and flexible suspension components.

Chennai port gets Rs 100 cr for new hub

September 01, 2010 Business Standard Chennai: Port trust will procure land from Sipcot: Vasan The Union shipping ministry has sanctioned Rs 100 crore to the Chennai Port Trust to procure around 125 acres of land from the Tamil Nadu government on a long-term lease to set up a dry port and multi-modal logistics hub near Sriperumbudur special economic zone. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of 12th meeting of Maritime States Development Council, shipping minister GK Vasan said that the port trust would procure land from the State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu Ltd (Sipcot). The state government had already confirmed the land allotment a few days ago. The government will provide the land at Mapeddu on lease for 99 years to the port trust, which plans to develop the hub near the Sriperumbudur SEZ on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis. The private operator will build and operate the facility for a 30-year licence period. The new dry port and logistics hub will come up near Sriperumbudur, a major centre for automobile and mobile phone manufacturing. The dry port will have an inland container depot/offdock container freight station, container yard, rail and road connectivity to national rail and road network, trade centre, warehouses for containerised cargoes such as leather garments, textiles, automotive components and electronic hardware. The hub will also have an onsite customs clearance facility.

Tax incentives for business to be investment-linked


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New Delhi: The Direct Taxes Code (DTC) Bill has proposed to substitute all profit-linked incentives with investment-linked incentives for businesses that enjoy tax sops under the existing law. Apart from developers of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and units operating out of them, the proposal will also affect companies in power, infrastructure, food processing, hotel and hospital sectors, among others. DTC will substitute profit-linked incentives with investment-based incentives wherein capital expenditure incurred for specified businesses will be allowed as a deductible expenditure. However, certain profit-linked tax incentives under the Income Tax Act are grandfathered in the DTC. This means certain profit-linked deductions currently available will be protected for unexpired period in the code. Setting up and operating a cold chain and warehousing facility for the storage of agricultural produce will qualify for investment-linked tax incentives. The benefit will be extended to exploration and production of mineral or natural gas. The investment-linked incentives will also apply to businesses involved in generation, transmission or distribution of power; developing or operating and maintaining any infrastructure facility; operating and maintaining a hospital in a specified area; processing, preservation and packaging of fruits and vegetables; and laying and operating of a cross country natural gas or crude or petroleum oil pipeline network for distribution, including storage facilities being an integral part of the network. Building and operating a new hotel of two-star plus category commencing operations on or after April 1, 2010 will get investment-based sops. A similar benefit will be given for building and operating a new hospital with at least 100 beds, and developing and building a housing project under slum redevelopment or rehabilitation scheme commencing operations on or after April 1, 2010. Deduction will be allowed on all capital expenditure, other than land, goodwill and financial instruments. The government has found profit-linked incentives distortionary, inefficient and inequitable, thereby leading to increased administrative burden, revenue loss and litigation. Revenue secretary Sunil Mitra had said profit-linked deductions would be replaced by investment-linked deductions, with the provision for availing the unexpired portion of area-based and profit-linked deductions under the Income Tax Act.

Economy grows 8.8 per cent in Q1

September 01, 2010 IBEF New Delhi: Fuelled by strong manufacturing and services industry results, the Indian economy reported an impressive 8.8 per cent growth in the April-June 2010, the fastest growth in nine quarters. Although the agriculture sector was comparatively subdued this quarter, the scenario is expected to change in subsequent quarters on account of healthy kharif sowing after a spell of good monsoons, according to both economists and government sources alike.

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Job creation in the manufacturing sector is expected to go up as well, according to Mr Pranab Mukherjee, Union Finance Minister; who said “The numbers are quite encouraging. The more encouraging point is 12.4 per cent growth in the manufacturing sector. I do hope it will be possible to maintain this level of growth." As per Mr Kaushik Basu, Chief Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance, "The growth prospects are quite optimistic. It is led by remarkable performance of the manufacturing sector and that in itself speaks very well of the future. Such high quarterly growth in the manufacturing sector has happened only once in India, in 2006-07, and is quite an extraordinary achievement." However, things are expected to temper down in the following quarters though, with analysts expecting moderation after the second quarter. "Industry's numbers are likely to moderate in the coming quarters, resulting in full-year growth of 8.4 per cent," said Rohini Malkani, an economist at Citi India. A contributing factor to the generous gross domestic product (GDP) growth numbers for the first quarter has also been a statistical low-base effect. “(GDP growth) is on expected lines. The overall GDP growth in this fiscal would be slightly better than 8.5 per cent as projected earlier. IIP (index of industrial production) growth might moderate in coming months on base effect, but growth in agriculture will pick up as monsoons are good,” said Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission. The present growth has been largely as per the expectations pegged by analysts of 8.5 per cent, as well as, the government’s own projections. There is a general sense amongst economists that the Reserve Bank of India will continue with a calibrated increase in policy rates, with a likely 25-basis point hike in repo and reverse repo in its September 16, 2010 review.

Chinese, Italian companies set up ceramic service offices in Morbi

August 31, 2010 Business Standard Mumbai/ Rajkot: Chinese and Italian companies have opened offices in Morbi, Gujarat to provide after sales services to the ceramic industry. Morbi is well known as hub for ceramic items and vitrified tiles in Indian ceramic industry. As per industry sources, most of the parts and machineries are come from China and Italy and companies from these countries are opening up offices to provide technical support. Moreover, the companies also intend to provide training to locals for operating the tools. “About 30-40 companies have started their offices in Morbi and their main purpose is marketing and after sales services. These are some of the major companies from China who provide parts and machineries for the ceramic industry,” said Girish Pethapara, Managing Director of Decolight Ceramic Limited. According to Rajubhai Patel, President of Morbi Ceramic Association, Morbi imports about Rs 300-400 crore worth parts and machineries from China and Italy every year which include leasing line, roller, pressing and printing machines. In past two years, about 30-40 companies have opened their offices in the town and more than 55-60 technical personnel have been providing services as well as training to the industries. “Each

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ceramic company has around 10-15 technical staff members, most of which are semi skilled persons so it becomes necessary to give knowledge of operating,” said Patel. The city is a home to more then 350 ceramic products manufacturing units. The main products of this ceramic city are best quality Ceramic tiles, Vitrified tiles, Floor tiles, Glazed tiles, Sanitary wares, Porcelain tiles, Spartek tiles, Roofing tiles and Mosaic tiles. Meanwhile, Rohil Remani, managing director of Ozzy Vitrified Pvt. Ltd. said, “We need technical support from them so it is more convenient for them to settle over here. Also they guide our staffs for operations.” The industry manufactures more then 80 percent of total ceramic production in India. India ranks fifth among tile makers globally, with the unorganized sector accounting for 55 percent of the country's total tile business, according to the Indian Council for Ceramic Tiles and Sanitary ware, an organization of tile makers. Industry gives direct employment to 85000 people.

Indonesia keen on attracting more Indian investments August 30, 2010 The Hindu Business Line Chennai: A number of Indian companies (including the Tatas and Reliance) have invested in coal mines in Indonesia and the public sector aluminium major, Nalco, is investing Rs 18,000 crore for setting up a production centre in the country. Indonesia wishes that many more Indian companies follow the example of these companies and invest there. “I wish to underline that Indonesia is the fourth largest market (in terms of population) in the world, after China, India and the US,” says Lt. General (Retd) Andi M. Ghalib, Indonesia's Ambassador in India, who was in Chennai recently. The country is inhabited by 237 million people, making it a large market. A part of the Ambassador's mission here was to seek Indian participation in the forthcoming trade and investment fair – The 25th Indonesia Trade Expo – that is to be held in the Indonesian capital between October 13 and 17. The prospective sectors for investment are energy, petrochemicals and refinery, iron and steel, telecommunications and automotive, says the Indonesian Trade Promotion Centre, here. Ambassador Ghalib believes that Indonesia and India are natural friends. In a chat with Business Line, he stressed the point that the President of Indonesia and the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, “are very good friends”. He rued the fact that a lot of goods of Indonesian origin today have to come to India through other countries, mostly Singapore or Malaysia, and hoped that Indonesia and India would trade with each other directly in the coming years.

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Indonesia wants India's assistance mainly in agriculture and information technology, he said. Mr Otto Raidi, Counsellor, Embassy of The Republic of Indonesia, New Delhi, who accompanied the Ambassador to Chennai, said that the Reliance group, having acquired two mining companies in Indonesia, was in the process of establishing transport lines between Indonesia and India. In response to a question, he said that foreign owners of coal mines in Indonesia only needed to sell a fifth of their annual coal production into the domestic market. Mr Somi Hazari, Managing Director, Shosova Properties Pvt. Ltd and an Executive Member India-Asean Sri Lanka Chamber of Commerce, told Business Line that India would greatly benefit by increasing trade ties with Indonesia, the country being a large market for Indian goods.

Seven payloads firmed up for Chandrayaan-2 August 30, 2010 The Hindu Business Line Bangalore: ISRO on Monday said a national committee of experts has finalised seven payloads that will go on the second lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2, sometime in 2013. At least two key instruments will probe further to confirm presence of water ice - which was indicated by the first lunar mission of 2008-09, an ISRO release said. Chandrayaan-2 will have an orbiter (satellite), a lunar lander to be built by Russia, and an ISRO-built rover that will explore the lunar landscape. Five payloads or scientific experiments will be placed on the orbiter and two on the rover. The Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft will weigh 2,650 kg when it is launched; the orbiter alone will weigh 1,400 kg and lander about 1,250 kg. The subsystems of the orbiter and the rover are being developed at the Bangalore, Thiruvananthapuram and Ahmedabad centres. Three of the orbiter payloads are new while two are improved versions of the payloads that went on the successful Chandrayaan-1 orbiter of 2008-09. “Inclusion of additional payloads, if possible within the mission constraints, will be considered at a later date following a detailed review,” the release said. On the Chandrayaan-1, a MIP or Moon Impact Probe was included close towards the launch. Nearly half of its 11 payloads were guest experiments from other countries. No invitations have been made so far, according to the ISRO spokesperson. The former ISRO Chairman, Dr U.R.Rao, heads the national committee of experts drawn from ISRO centres, academic institutions and R&D labs. Dr Rao also chairs the Advisory Committee on Space Sciences (ADCOS). Chandrayaan-2 is to be launched on the Indian rocket, the GSLV, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota. The orbiter is to carry a Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer (CLASS) from ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC), Bangalore and Solar X-ray Monitor (XSM) from Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad for mapping the major lunar elements. An L- and S-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) from SAC will probe the first few meters for the presence of water ice among others. The first lunar mission had indicated presence of water in the shadowed regions. An Imaging IR Spectrometer (IIRS) from SAC will map the lunar surface and look for minerals, water molecules and hydroxyl. A Neutral Mass Spectrometer (ChACE–2) from Space Physics Laboratory (SPL), Thiruvananthapuram, will make a detailed study of the lunar exosphere.

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This time, too, a Terrain Mapping Camera–2 (TMC–2) from SAC will be deployed to prepare a 3D map of Moon's minerals and geology. The rover will carry a Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) from Laboratory for Electro Optic Systems (LEOS), Bangalore; and an Alpha Particle Induced X-ray Spectroscope (APIXS) from Physical Research Labs, Ahmedabad. Both the instruments will analyse the elements at the lunar landing site.

Society

Music

Brahms In Bengalooru Western classical music has a fresh generation of students. They aren’t the usual suspects. Sugata Srinivasaraju Sep 15, 2010 OUTLOOKINDIA Nikhil Goyal was showing one of his relations around their new flat. When they stopped by his room, the relative remarked, “So you are the bandmaster in the family.” The label of ‘bandmaster’ may be a rather loose term to appreciate the high art of operatic singing (which Nikhil is pursuing), but it typifies the common Indian reaction to western classical music—as largely an elite, exotic enterprise with heavy imperial association. A dent was perhaps made in our collective unconscious in the last decade through the ubiquitous polyphonic mobile ringtones, and now the beginnings of a trend wafts up in our cities suggesting bigger things to come. For one, the profiles of those learning western classical music are changing. Traditionally, it has been the Anglo-Indians, Parsis and the Christians who have taken to it, but now the Marwaris, Punjabis, Tamils, Kannadigas and Malayalis among others are coming together to form a most unusual symphony. In a sense, it is about new India’s confidence—unshackling history and democratising the arts. Take Nikhil’s case, a 26-year-old from a Marwari family that owns a transport business. His formal education was in commerce (his father wanted him to do an MBA) but sheer passion has led his baritone to the doorsteps of the prestigious Academy of Music in Lodz, Poland. Like many, he sang the popular stuff in school and college and had only casual acquaintance with opera singing (through a pastor when he was about 23). The turnaround came from a chance meeting with some top Polish opera singers who were in Bangalore during the Polish Festival in 2009. “The festival’s moving spirit Akumal Ramchander had spoken to them about my interest. At some point, Agnieszka Kurowska and Tomasz Rak, Poland’s leading opera singers, asked me if I’d like to sing with them. They felt I had potential. And they guided me through the process of applying to various music universities in Europe. After a year’s hard work and a crash course in Polish, I made it to Lodz,” says Nikhil, who begins a three-year bachelor’s programme from October. Kurowska, speaking from Warsaw, says, “Nikhil has a very interesting voice and I am happy that I was the first one to identify that. He is a very serious student.”

Vedant Khaitan Age: 30 years

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Place: Calcutta and Delhi. Vedant runs a school and his family is into manufacturing industry grade sulphuric acid. What he’s learning: He has been learning classical music since he was 11. Training to be a pianist under American maestro Justine McCarthy. Nikhil’s seems to be a circuitous route but for fellow Marwaris Vedant Khaitan and Pranab Dalmia, it’s been a much more smooth passage. The two are training to be pianists in Delhi under American maestro Justine McCarthy. Vedant (30), originally from Calcutta, has been learning classical music since he was 11 and hopes to give public performances, but is clear that it will remain an activity of leisure. He runs a school and his family is into manufacturing industry grade sulphuric acid. Pranab (20), meanwhile, who is a student of philosophy at St Stephen’s College, has been training since he was eight and hopes to acquire reasonable proficiency to give concerts.

Aruna Sunderlal, who runs the Bangalore School of Music (BSM), says that western classical music has an entirely new set of admirers now in India. Which perhaps accounts for the fact that of the three hundred students she has, over 50 per cent “are from unconventional backgrounds”. “Earlier, there was one Raja Ramanna, who was a physicist and a concert pianist, but now, in the last five years, we have lots of people from the software industry. Many of them have come back after a stint abroad where their children were exposed to classical music and they want to continue with it here. But that is not to say we don’t get other people. For example, our conductor, Narayanaswamy (50), is a Brahmin whose family is from Mylapore in Madras and is deeply rooted in Carnatic classical music.”

Meera and Sriram Age: 9 and 13 years Place: Bangalore. Children of software engineer parents, Ganeshan and Sumathi, who lived abroad for 18 years and returned to Bangalore in 2005. What they are learning: They play violin and piano respectively. Also the guitar.

A casual survey of the students at BSM shores up this truth. Siblings Meera (9) and Sriram Ganeshan (13), who play the violin and piano plus the guitar, are children of software engineers who lived abroad for 18 years and returned to Bangalore in 2005. Divya Raghunathan (14) who has been training on the viola and violin, is the daughter of a scientist at the Raman Research Institute in the city. Jump cities and you have Sherry Verghese (17), who is training in opera singing in Delhi under Christine Matovich, a renowned opera singer from the US, and is the talented son of a school estate manager who migrated to Delhi from Kerala some 30 years ago. As is amply evident, the Indian surnames that follow the conductor’s baton have diversified. And so has the demand. Matovich says requests for classes have been so overwhelming that she’s swamped and left with the unenviable task of saying no to a few worthies. Gita Chacko, pianist and regional coordinator of the Associated Board of the Royal School of Music (ABRSM) for Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, says every teacher has a waiting list. So what spurs this trend? Chacko attributes it to the easy availability of western musical instruments and the large disposable incomes. “Procuring instruments has become much easier now, because imports are allowed. For a long time, the government had banned imports of western instruments and even when they were lifted some two decades ago they imposed a three hundred per cent duty. But now it’s minimal.”

Sherry Verghese

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Age: 17 years Place: Kerala and Delhi. Son of a school estate manager who came to Delhi 30 years ago. What he’s learning: Sherry is learning operatic singing under Christine Matovich, a renowned opera singer from the US.

Chacko also says that people taking music board exams in London from India has increased by leaps and bounds. “In Bangalore alone, the number of people taking exams has gone up 26 per cent. There were nearly 1,000 candidates last year,” she adds. Like Manjit Singh (36), a restaurateur in Bangalore whose family migrated from Lahore during Partition, who finds new moorings in the classical guitar. Manjeet was into rock music for over a decade, but now finds it “very stimulating” to play complex compositions at the BSM. Well, the Garden City has its complex compositions but in south India western classical music’s brightest sparks in terms of interest is happening in Hyderabad. Pan India though, it’s the Northeast that’s streets ahead of the others. Christine Matovich, who has made extensive trips there in the recent past, says there are a number of reasons why this is happening. “There is a great mathematical correlation between western notation and code programming that Indians are familiar with as well as new composition software technology that requires the ability to read notation. In the Northeast, they have the potential to keep both their aural and oral tradition and pick up the new ‘written literacy’ related to western classical music. I see a great deal of adaptability. It is just like adding on one more layer to India’s great musical culture,” she says. Renowned operatic composer Naresh Sohal, who has worked with eminent conductors like Andrew Davis and Zubin Mehta, has a different take on the new renaissance in India. “The Parsis, Christians and Anglo-Indians were keen on western classical music for historical reasons, so there’s a certain nostalgia about it for them, and this is understandable. But the world has moved on. India is achieving so many aspirational goals in so many fields, it’s time for it to look at the musical development of its young citizens in the same way,” he says. Sohal himself had moved four decades ago from the “dusty plains of Punjab to the pristine halls of western classical music” with just two pounds in his pocket. As he puts it, “There’s a tendency to assume that someone who opts to express him or herself in a tradition that’s not indigenous to India is some form of cultural traitor; that they’re going off to ape their former imperial masters. This is a narrow view. Becoming involved in western classical music is not just about following in the steps of Beethoven and other worthies...it’s about finding your own voice, and saying what you want to say using the means that music offers.” And there begins a new crescendo.

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