1 The San Francisco Chronicle on car sales transforming India. Little is changing modern India more than the spread of cars, a four-wheeled reflection of its economic transformation and a window into the aspirations of the new Indian middle class. Farmers and schoolteachers now buy cars. Maruti sells its cars with ads showing an idealized India that barely exists, even in the country's wealthiest enclaves: sprawling houses with white picket fences, highways with no traffic, friendly towns without a hint of litter. Everywhere, there are joyful Indians driving Marutis. That's the Indian dream they're selling. The fantasy began taking shape in 1991, when the government was facing crushing debt payments and dangerously low foreign-exchange reserves. Desperate to save itself, India abandoned socialism and embraced globalization to become one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Per capita income 20 years ago was $350, one-quarter of what it is today. The literacy rate was 42%. Cars were an unimaginable extravagance. The small middle-class spent years on waiting lists for cars. Then, for the most part, those folks had two choices: the Ambassador, a ridiculously outdated bubble-topped sedan whose design was borrowed from 1950s Britain; and the Maruti 800, a stripped-down economy model that resembled a metal box with wheels. What began in 1991, though, has turned India into an economic juggernaut, with a middle class that by some estimates has reached 250 million people. Indians bought 2.5 million cars last year, 25% more than the year before. Everywhere, cars are bringing change.
2 The San Francisco Chronicle on online speech facing an assault across the globe. Worldwide leaders gathered in The Hague, Netherlands, last week to discuss government responsibilities to protect online freedom, at a point when the principle is under attack around the globe. At a press conference last week, Indian telecommunications Minister Kapil Sibal pointed to online illustrations of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi in "compromising positions," the Associated Press reported. "If somebody is not willing to cooperate on incendiary material like this, it is the duty of government to think of steps that we need to take," Sibal said. To their credit, the businesses have refused to cooperate. Google said it will remove material that is illegal or breaks its terms of service. But none of these companies wants to get into the messy business of determining and filtering merely controversial content. During her speech at the conference, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized companies that provide censorship technology to oppressive regimes and insisted nations have far more to gain than lose by allowing unfettered online access.
3 BBC report that unemployment is world’s fastest-rising fear. A BBC World Service survey covering 11,000 people in 23 countries found unemployment was the world's fastest-rising worry. Corruption and poverty still ranked the highest, but unemployment was mentioned by 18% - six times the number citing it in the first survey in 2009. The growth in concern was found across all countries surveyed, although corruption emerged as the most talked about global concern. Next came extreme poverty. One in five had talked about that subject recently.
4 MJ Akbar wondering in The Khaleej Times, how one can censor a teashop. Censorship is generally the last temptation of self-delusional governments who want to console themselves with the illusion that their error is not misrule but vilification. The alibi for censorship is always national interest, of course. They want to eliminate debate, questions and consequent accountability because their greed for office is limitless. If censorship of the net was nothing more than a technicality — switching off the servers, for instance — it would have already happened. A democratic government does not, however, have the arbitrary authority of a Muammar Gaddafi or Assad, or the anonymous muscle of a Chinese Communist Party. Artificial arguments have to be used. But the government of India will soon discover that the net does not bend as easily as some of its collaborators in private sector communication. Social media is the largest teashop in human history. Rahul Gandhi is aware that the Anna Hazare movement has made brilliant use of social media to spread its anti-establishment message. Hazare has publicly blamed Rahul Gandhi for weakening the proposed Lok Pal legislation. The government can do nothing about Hazare. Is it trying to censor the Internet that carries Hazare’s message? If this is the logic behind telecommunication minister Kapil Sibal’s idea, then here is some breaking news. Get real. This teashop has no walls.
5 The Dawn on Britain facing EU isolation. Prime Minister David Cameron has made history by blocking EU treaty change in a move that has isolated Britain and this detachment will define the next chapter in this island nation’s notoriously tricky relations with continental Europe. Cameron, who styles himself a “eurosceptic,” seems to have pushed Britain further from the heart of Europe than even “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher dared to do in her battles in the 1980s when she said “No, No, No” to Brussels increasing its powers. The prime minister was left out in the cold in Brussels when France and Germany failed to give him the safeguards he wanted for the powerful City of London financial services industry, which accounts for 10% of economic output. “It is a black day for Britain and Europe,” Liberal Democrat Lord Oakeshott said. “We are now in the waiting room while critical decisions are being taken.” Britain, the EU’s third-biggest economy, was left on its own with an overwhelming majority of countries led by Germany and France agreeing to forge ahead with a separate treaty to build closer fiscal union to preserve the euro.
Britain never joined the 17-country single currency zone. Nevertheless, over 40% of Britain’s trade is with the euro zone and about three million jobs depend on trade with Europe. Analysts said Britain’s isolation could result in core EU nations effectively taking over decision-making without London. Regulation affecting financial services industry could now be decided by 26 rather than all 27 EU members.
6 Fareed Zakaria in The Khaleej Times about America’s investment gap. A World Economic Forum survey that ranks countries on their overall economic competitiveness puts the US fifth; the countries ahead of it, including Singapore and Finland, are tiny, with populations around 5% that of the US. The World Bank’s report “Doing Business” ranks the US No. 4 again behind a handful of tiny countries. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released a study last week measuring tax revenue as a percentage of gross domestic product. The United States came in 27th out of 30 countries.
So, outside of the tax code, the US does not seem to have slipped very much in terms of competitiveness and ease of doing business. What has changed? The answer is pretty clear. Only five years ago, American infrastructure used to be ranked in the top 10 by the World Economic Forum. Now we’re 24th. US air infrastructure has gone from 12th to 31st, roads from eighth to 20th. The drop in human capital is greater. The US used to have the world’s largest percentage of college graduates. We’re now No. 14. Michael Spence, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, points out that the US got out of the Great Depression because of the spending associated with World War II but also because during the war, it dramatically reduced its consumption and expanded investments. People spent less, saved more and bought war bonds. That surge in investment — by people and government — produced a generation of growth after the war. If we want the next generation of growth, we need a similarly serious strategy of investment.
7 The Khaleej Times on the divide in Russia. For years, the Kremlin’s political engineers have been suppressing bottom-up movements and creating top-down manageable structures. They have cemented full control over countrywide television channels, and their heavy censorship has created a wall between the silent, TV-watching majority and a vocal, Internet-savvy minority. Big-name news anchors have not even mentioned the protests or the crackdown. The Kremlin controls the political system, the courts and the entire law-enforcement system, as well as regional finances and major industries.
Opinion polls (conducted before the elections) have consistently shown a widespread rentier mentality and a preference among young people for jobs at Gazprom and Rosneft, the state-owned natural-resources monopolies. These young people, officials and aspiring bosses, may well see the protesters as rivals or enemies meddling with their lucrative future. It’s not just the rentier state-supporting party and disorganised, quixotic protesters who have collided in Moscow. Two world views and two images of the country’s future are at odds. There are no easy ways out of the deadlock the Russian society has found itself in. Thanks to all those years of pretend politics and Potemkin party-building, Russia does not have a ready alternative to Vladimir Putin’s party. But Putin and his party are no longer as powerful as they were before the vote. Although a majority on paper, they can no longer act in the name of the people.
8 The Los Angeles Times on horses paying for the dire economy. Arabians, paints and quarter horses that were once prized possessions of families throughout Southern California are increasingly being cut loose as unaffordable luxuries, especially in communities trampled by double-digit unemployment and pocked with foreclosed homes. Some horses are sold off for a fraction of what their owners paid, saving them thousands in feed and care expenses. Scores of others have been abandoned, many found foraging for food or rescued from owners who starved them into bony cripples. Horse sanctuaries, some providing a home for more than 50 head, are struggling to stay afloat, and a few are declining to accept newcomers. "Up until two or three years ago, we'd find maybe two abandoned horses a year. It's a horse a week now," said Allan Drusys, chief veterinarian for Riverside County's Department of Animal Services.
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