1 EU’s bailout fund is downgraded (BBC) Credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's has downgraded the EU bailout fund to AA+ from AAA. The European Financial Stability Facility's (EFSF) rating is based on the ratings of the countries that guarantee it. S&P's downgrade of France and Austria on Friday meant there were not enough AAA rated guarantors for the fund to maintain its top rating. The downgrade could affect the EFSF's ability to raise money cheaply. S&P said the EFSF could regain its AAA rating if it obtained additional guarantees. Alternatively, the fund could be endowed with less money, which would be better guaranteed. BBC business editor Robert Peston says that, following the S&P downgrades, the bailout funds are endowed with what looks like a puddle or pond, rather than a great sea of money stretching beyond the horizon.
2 Disaster in birth (Khaleej Times) When India got its independence in 1947, its population was around 360 million. Today, it is 1.2 billion, more than three times as much (the statistics for Pakistan are even more startling, from a 35 million population to 185 million, a six-fold increase). No rocket science needed to conclude that if India had been able to control its population growth rate, its people would have been better fed, educated and housed. In 1947, almost half of India was covered by forests that teemed with an incredible variety of wildlife. Now, the forest cover is down to 20%, with several species of fauna and flora either extinct or on the endangered list, the tiger and the lion being the most prominent. Last October 31, the world’s population reached the seven billion mark. And it is still growing by an unsustainable 75 million a year, almost all the growth being in the poorest parts of the developing world. The UN projects it will reach nine billion by 2050 and then soar to over 10 billion by the end of the century. We have been warned.
3 Urban Chinese outnumber rural (The Straits Times) China has revealed that the number of people living in cities outnumbered those living in the countryside for the first time, as more and more people leave rural areas to seek better economic opportunities. Urban dwellers now represent 51.27% of China's entire population of nearly 1.35 billion - or 690.8 million people - the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said. China has for centuries been a mainly agrarian nation, but economic reforms undertaken more than three decades ago have triggered breakneck growth and a huge population shift to cities and coastal areas.
4 Murder of a child servant (The Dawn) It is sad that child labour exists in Pakistan and sadder still that the child labour pool is inexhaustible and growing bigger. All of them lose their childhood in the servitude, but what is horrible is that some lose even their lives. Most of the estimated three million children in the unskilled workforce in the country are employed in the shadow economy but a significant number serve as domestic help. Ali Shan, 11, was such a servant, employed by a couple living in Sector G-13 to look after their seven-month-old child and do other house chores. His master, Mudasar Abbas, is a Grade 18 officer in Nescom. On January 5, his wife Atiya Al-Hussain informed police that Shan had committed suicide by hanging himself with curtain in the living room.
However, the Golra police who arrived to investigate found that circumstantial evidence did not found her claim. Shan’s body was not hanging but standing on its knees from a curtain that was still on its railing with its lower portion passing through the sweater he had on. That made the police arrest Abbas and his wife Atiya on murder charge. Police’s suspicions were confirmed by the autopsy. The body bore no sign of hanging, nor any injuries. Instead the autopsy suggested the boy had been strangled as his neck had a round mark and not the ‘V’ mark that signifies a hanging.
It was not the first incident of killing of a domestic servant at employer’s house. On July 24, 2010, teenaged housemaid Salima Bibi was found dead with a bullet in her body at the house of her employer in G-10/1. Her employer also had claimed that she committed suicide by shooting herself with his pistol. Another housemaid had died at the hands of her employers in the Bhara Kahu outskirts the previous year. Her brutally tortured body was found in a wooded area near Rawal Lake on January 15, 2009. She was hit on her head and her neck was slit as well as strangulated.
5 Jokes on Team India (The Economic Times) When India’s cricket captain MS Dhoni was banned from playing at Adelaide because of the slow over-rate in the third Test at Perth, the joke going around was that Dhoni should have actually been rewarded and not penalised since the slow over-rate ensured that the match, which began on Friday, went into the third day on Sunday when office-goers in Australia have their weekly off and are free to go to the stadium to watch cricket! A news channel's headline saying "Dhoni banned for one Test, Sehwag to lead" also evoked quips. A fan wondered whether it would have been simpler to flash a headline saying "Dhoni banned, Sehwag to lose"!
Team India has also inspired cartoonists and not just in India. In 1974, when the Indian Test team was bundled out for 42 at Lord's, the Punch magazine carried a cartoon where a wife tells her husband who has just come out of the toilet at the stadium that "You should have gone before we left home. The entire Indian second innings is over." With Team India's consecutive losses in Australia inspiring more and more alliterative headlines, it remains to be seen whether "Mauled at Melbourne", "Shamed at Sydney" and "Pounded at Perth" will be followed by "Annihilated at Adelaide".
6 Erosion of institution of editor in India (Indian Express) Underlining that “watchdog journalism” is “vibrant journalism” in a changed and changing world, Vice President Hamid Ansari said it stands for rights and freedom and does not “entertain and titillate”. He said the media being the fourth estate “should shape perceptions and also the national agenda”. Experience, he said, shows that the best guarantee for safeguarding public interest is to have strong and independent-minded editors — an endangered species today. "The slow erosion of the institution of the editor in Indian media organisations is a reality. When media space and media products are treated solely in terms of revenue maximisation strategies, editors end up giving way to marketing departments.”
Maintaining that media norms is an issue of public debate, the Vice President said: “We have, as yet, not had an informed debate in the country on the issue of multiple-ownership and cross-ownership nor a cogent national media policy that covers all platforms.” This, he said, was at variance with the practice of other developed democracies. “The impact of the emergence of a handful of media conglomerates spanning the entire media spectrum in moulding public opinion, generating political debate and safeguarding consumer and public interest is a moot question,” he said. Biases, Ansari said, have prompted the media to resort to “sunshine journalism” where the focus is on the glass that is quarter-full rather than that which is three-quarters empty. “When this occurs, the role of the media as a defender and upholder of public interest does get dented and relegated to the background.”
On journalism, Ansari pointed to three aspects that he finds noteworthy. “First, it has become evident that technology is neither value-neutral nor inherently equity-driven. The hard work of defining and implementing a value system and a vision for an organisation, a society or polity cannot be substituted by technology.” “The convergence between news media, entertainment and telecom has eroded the demarcation between journalism, public relations, advertising and entertainment. So is the case between business, commerce, philanthropy, politics and profession. It is not clear where public interest ends and private interest begins, where profit ends and the not-for-profit begins, where government ends and the non-government begins, where one’s fist ends and the other’s nose begins. This has significantly enhanced the complexity of our working and personal lives and created new ethical dilemmas that lie at the core of many issues of public debate today.”
“Third, the public purpose of journalism that guided us in an earlier era has changed. Gandhiji was probably the first editor in the history of Indian journalism to have started a newspaper for the express purpose of breaking the law governing the publication of newspapers. He was also one of the first editors to be prosecuted for sedition. It was this public purpose of journalism that had propelled Ramnath Goenka into the newspaper business,” Ansari said.
7 Hype and reality of investment summits in India (Business Line) After a break of two years, the CII-Partnership Summit (January 12-13) was revived in Andhra Pradesh. This time, there was renewed excitement and enthusiasm, reflected in the signing of 243 MoUs with investments worth Rs 6.47trn. The two-day Summit seems to have given a boost to the sagging image of Hyderabad and Andhra Pradesh as a favoured investment destination. But the hype generated by the MoUs has raised many eyebrows. How much of this will fructify on the ground? Further, corporates are requesting ready infrastructure, power subsidy and a range of incentives, which governments are sometimes eager to offer. However, MoUs may not have a bright future, in view of funds becoming scarce, power availability being a concern and government finances being stretched. Anyway, there seems to be no great sanctity attached to MoUs, which have often remained just that.
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