Sunday, January 15, 2012

Big job losses stare at big banks; Nigeria's resource curse; No toilet, no bride for India men; Life's worth nothing in San Salvador

1 Big job losses stare at big banks (Sydney Morning Herald) Big banks are likely to scrap 7,000 jobs over the next two years as lenders cut costs that account for 58% of expenses to offset the weakest credit growth since World War II, according to UBS. Lenders will reduce total staff numbers by 3.9% to 172,000 from 179,000, UBS analysts said in a note to clients. The focus on employment costs at banks mirror the challenge faced around the world by lenders battling slower revenue growth amid weak household and business confidence. UBS estimates housing credit grew from 1977 to 2010 at a 14% annual pace, and is currently expanding at 5.7%, the weakest rate since World War II.

2 Nigeria’s resource curse (The Khaleej Times) On January 1 Nigerians awoke to find that the price of gasoline had gone from just under $2 a gallon to almost $4 a gallon. Since the beginning of this week, tens of thousands of angry protesters have taken to the streets all over the country; several are dead. More than 80% of Nigerians live on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank. Although most of its citizens are poor, Nigeria is resource rich. It is an OPEC member and almost all of the country’s foreign exchange earnings come from the exportation of oil. Nigeria is Africa’s top oil producer, producing more than 2 million barrels a day. Nigeria also has vast amounts of natural gas, semiprecious stones, coal, tin and other natural resources.

Nigeria is a classic case of the ‘resource curse’ — a country that generates huge amounts of wealth, but where the vast majority of citizens face a daily battle to put food on the table. So where does all the money go? It is true, as Nigerian politicians like to point out, that the country’s population — an estimated 155 million — dwarfs that of every other country that depends overwhelmingly on crude oil export. But corruption and mismanagement have a great deal to do with the fact that most Nigerians do not have access to basic services, such as decent roads, well-equipped schools, hospitals and clinics adequately stocked with medical supplies.

Nigerian politicians are among the best paid in the world. Nigerian senators, for example, purportedly make more than a $1 million a year. In 2010, the government earmarked more than $150 million to buy new aircraft for the presidential fleet. Nigeria’s presidential fleet (6 to 12 planes, depending on the source) is among the largest in the world, larger than the fleets of the presidents of the US and Germany. Even more shocking, the 2012 budget includes roughly $6.5 million to provide meals for the households of the president and vice president, and millions of dollars more for the purchase and refurbishment of furnishings.

3 No toilet, no bride for Indian men (The Wall Street Journal) When something is in short supply, common sense suggests that it should become more valuable. This intuition is borne out in the market for goods and services as well as the labor market. But could this logic also apply to women? According to India’s 2011 census, the sex ratio for children under six was recorded as 914 females to 1,000 males, a decline from 927 in 2001. This precipitous drop in the number of girls reflects the cultural fact of “son preference” as manifested through sex-selective abortion and relative neglect of girls compared to boys.

Given that there are fewer women relative to men, has the law of supply and demand kicked in to raise women’s “value”? A potentially important avenue through which an increase in women’s value may show up is in the marriage market. Demographer Christophe Guilmoto recently projected that in a worst case scenario, there may be as many as 50% more prospective grooms than brides in the coming three decades in India and China. This is a new variation on what demographers term the “marriage squeeze.”

One way to measure a potential increase in the value of women in the marriage market is to see if the bargaining equation has shifted in their favour, as opposed to the parents of prospective grooms. A much discussed government campaign from 2005 in the state of Haryana is often seen as evidence that this may indeed be happening. The state government launched a campaign popularly known as “No Toilet, No Bride,” which aimed to persuade women and their families that they should not marry a prospective groom unless they have or install a private latrine. The fact that this occurred in Haryana is significant given that along with neighbouring Punjab, it has the one of the most skewed sex ratios in the country at 877 girls for 1,000 boys.

4 Only 10% of India grads are employable (The Times of India) Chairman of the National assessment and accreditation council (NAAC) executive committee, Goverdhan Mehta, has called for an innovative approach to raise the employability of graduates passing out of universities with traditional arts, commerce and science degrees. “We need out-of-the-box thinking to tackle the issue, considering that barely 10% of the 3m students, who pass with these degrees every year, are considered employable in today’s competitive world,” he said on Saturday. Mehta said emphasis needs to be laid on blending skills with education for employment, entrepreneurship development, knowledge and creation of wealth. “The prevailing higher education system needs to be more flexible in terms of adapting to the modern-day changes. Promoting liberal education can be a good alternative in this direction to help the system come out of an age-old structured format,” he said.

5 Life’s worth nothing in San Salvador (Al Jazeera) In the dusty, rubbish-strewn streets of Mejicanos, a working-class district of San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, Father Antonio Lopez Tercero points to the gang graffiti scarring the walls. Gang violence is one of the defining features of life in El Salvador today. In the capital alone, a city with a population of around two million, between 10 and 15 people are murdered daily: at least half of these deaths are gang-related and, in a climate of impunity, rarely is anyone caught. "Life is worth nothing in this country," Father Antonio says. "There is so much impunity. Killing someone is like killing a chicken."

'Padre Toño', as Father Antonio is known, is one of many whose lives are affected by the violence. But he is also one of the few prepared to work with the gang members; seeing them not just as criminals, but as victims of a divided society. "It takes no effort at all to go from being a victim to being an offender," he says. "All the resentment and accumulated senselessness of the world in which they've grown up means it is all too easy to cross over into violence."

6 The worst bureaucracy! Really? (The Economic Times) Bureaucracy bashing is India’s favourite national vocation. And for good reason. Our bureaucracy has its good share of crooks, criminals and cheats who need to be put away — with or without a Lokpal. The simple counter-question is, does the bureaucracy have a disproportionately larger share of crooks than in other professions in India, and the data clearly does not say a resounding yes. In fact, there is perhaps roughly an equal proportion of crooks in the corporate sector (where kickbacks are taken in large-scale procurement and bribing government), in politics, in the media (from paid news to fixing deals, blackmailing, etc), to professional service firms (reputed law firms becoming ‘payment gateways’ for bribes).

This article is meant to throw some light on the proverbial other side. It is not meant to deny or defend the existence of crooks in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) or other civil services, but merely shows the other side, because there is one. In the din surrounding corruption, even the finest of minds are making the mistake of tarring everyone with the same brush, which is simply not correct. Ask yourself, would an N Chandra produce the magic of making TCS India’s largest IT company if he were reporting to a Pappu Yadav and not to S Ramadorai? Would Nandan Nilekani and Shibulal have created the globally-admired brand Infosys, but for NR Narayanamurthy’s fabled leadership, and instead if they had a Suresh Kalmadi to report to?

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