Press freedom in India

Reporters without borders (RSF) has put out a list of countries ranked by press freedoms: India is ranked 131 (down from last year), between Burundi and Angola.

Income inequality

Below is the chart of Gini coefficient of income inequality of various countries (higher is more unequal). Note the position of South Africa. That is why John Pilger made a documentary called "Apartheid Did Not Die". (via Angry Arab)

US subversion in Central and South America

You might have heard of the term "Satellite State", that is states under the de-facto control of a neighbouring powerful state (like the Soviet Union). It is roughly synonymous with a puppet state.

We can do a similar analysis of the neighbourhood of the most powerful state in the world, the US. For many decades, centuries even, Latin America has been thought of as United States' "backyard". Military coups backed by the US were common and many of the states had top military officers trained by the US in the infamous "School of the Americas" (also called the "School of the Assassins"), in Fort Benning (it has since changed its name).

Here is a very nice map of US activities in Central and South America under 11 US presidents, starting from Eisenhower.

This is old stuff, to be sure, you might already know this. But the US is a global power and it carries out often similar policies elsewhere in its domain. They are of course modified to local circumstances. You can immediately see links between US and Pakistan military in this framework.

Here are a couple of links (via The Angry Arab News Service) on the background on a topical event, the French strikes in Mali and the hostage crisis in Algeria.

Putting growth in its place

A somewhat old but still massively relevant article by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen in Outlook on India's socio-economic performance since 1990.

The point of the article is that both the "massive success" (GDP growth) and the "massive failure" (poor social outcomes) of Indian economy since 1990 are true. To see the second point, they give stats on India's performance in South Asia (it has deteriorated, relatively, even below Nepal and Bangladesh and is only above Pakistan).

The key point they make is to distinguish between "unaimed opulence" and "growth-mediated development" (as introduced in their 1989 book, Hunger and Public Action, one of the best books I have ever read).

Unaimed opulence (they give the example of Brazil before Lula) is concentrating on economic growth without complementing social programs. It is in large part (they give exceptions in TN for example) what has happenned in India, with an extremely miserly spending on health and education.

Growth-mediated social programs would use the extra revenue generated by high growth (India has 4 times more revenue than 1990) in an active way, as Brazil has done after Lula came to power.

This is not just a theoretical difference, it requires politics of confronting power, like the biscuit lobby in Mid Day Meal program and corporate power in India.

As an aside, the Mid Day Meal program by itself has reduced effective poverty by a significant amount, so it is important to preserve it.

The whole article is worth a read.

Villagers in Jharkhand allegedly used as "human shields" by security forces

While there has been much outraged commentary about the (despicable) Maoist act of using a dead body as an IED, there have been reports of security forces forcing the villagers to come with them to look for the body and to use them as human shields. Even more disturbingly, the Indian Express has an interview with the police chief who said that it was standard procedure:

Local villagers are taken to search and carry the bodies all the time, mainly because the security personnel are carrying weapons

PUDR has a statement on the matter.

RIL is once again a darling of Dalal Street

Dalal Street relies on RIL again, cites 4G, KG basin gas price revision.

The KG basin gas price revision was recommended by the Rangarajan committe, which doubled the gas price from 4.2 to 8 per mmBtu and favoured deregulation. RIL wanted to triple the price to 14 but Jaipal Reddy had said no. He has been since replaced, of course, to much noise created by the opposition and Arvind Kejriwal.

India-Pakistan relations

(I might be updating this post)

Frontline has a review by A.G. Noorani about a 10 volume work on India-Pakistan relations by Avtar Singh Bhasin who "served in the Ministry of External Affairs for three decades in various capacities". It contains an enormous amount of material displayed for the first time.

 Some of the quotes are eye-popping.

Deputy Prime Minister Vallabhbhai Patel demanded territory from Pakistan “to enable us to settle” the refugees from that country. Given his outlook, it is not surprising that President Rajendra Prasad agreed with him.

Nehru described Mohammad Ali’s [Pakistan's foreign minister] ‘approach as intriguing’. Ali had blamed India for Pakistan’s military alliances and alignment with the West, to which India had taken exception. Mohammad Ali said, since India had failed to resolve the issues between them to Pakistan’s satisfaction, he had to enter into a military alliance.
...
The Soviet Ambassador in New Delhi, reporting to Nehru on the meeting of his colleague in Karachi with Noon, told the Indian Prime Minister that Noon had offered to walk out of the Baghdad Pact, ‘provided the Soviet Union gave assurances to support Pakistan in the United Nations on the Kashmir issue and further assurances to give military aid to Pakistan if attacked by India’.”

Moscow exerted itself strongly to persuade New Delhi to stiffen its policy towards Beijing through a Treaty of Alliance with the USSR—and burn its bridges with China; the USSR remaining free, of course, to make up with China, as it did in 1986-89, leaving India high and dry very much like the U.S’ policy today. 

 Particularly useful is the record of the Swaran Singh-Z.A. Bhutto talks on Kashmir. Bhasin does a service in reproducing full texts of the rival proposals made on January 19, 1963. They prove that by 1963 Pakistan had discarded a plebiscite in favour of a partition. It wanted all of the State minus Kathua. India was prepared to concede 3,500 square miles

Links

Harold Laswell (wikipedia entry) on The Theory of Political Propaganda

"Propaganda is the manage-
ment of collective attitudes by the manipulation of significant symbols"

S Anand (not me - Siriyavan Anand) - I will write a longer entry on him

A Case for Bhim Rajya (On Ambedkar's legacy)
Eating with Our Fingers, Watching Hindi Cinema and Consuming Cricket  (on Lagaan/cricket/Dalits and much else)

Officials hope that social and infrastructure spending is lower

This is literally true. In an article upbeat on meeting the fiscal deficit target of 5.3%, there is a line saying that

"Besides, officials said, hopes are high about huge savings on the Plan expenditure front, where a number of departments and other ministries have not been able to utilize allocations for social and infrastructure sectors" 

Not utilizing allocations on social and infrastructure sectors is a good thing? Even the business leaders and respected economic commentators (quoting the RBI) identify infrastructure as a key focus area.

Not to mention that social sectors require a lot of attention in India with spending on health and education among the lowest in the world as a percentage of GDP.

This is a case of deficit-fetishism. Fiscal deficit is not an end in itself. There is nothing good in this story.

Links

Plan for corporate India , by C P Chandrashekhar in Frontline

Investment climate may improve moderately in FY 2013: Survey in ET

Hawking the Deficit by C P Chandrashekhar and Jayati Ghosh in Macroscan

India's Growth Story: A Comparative View by C P Chandrashekhar and Jayati Ghosh in Macroscan

Why do people think economists are charlatans by Noah Smith on his blog, based on this paper. The graph here highlighting the disconnect between the general public and the economists (via the Economist) is also very funny. Note particularly the 100% agreement across economists of the hardness of predicting stock prices.