Tuesday, March 13, 2012

India's democratic dividend; China: Tiger or snake?; Politicians' alibis, post defeat; Salt-loving wheat to ease food crisis

1 India’s democratic dividend (The Wall Street Journal) The consensus view for most of the past decade in India held that good economic policy did not make for good politics. New Delhi's trade and investment openings since 1991 mostly benefited the middle class, while the poor in rural areas kept voting for corrupt politicians who promised more handouts. Last week's election results in five Indian states turned the conventional wisdom on its head. Voters, especially in India's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, resoundingly favored parties that promised development. The elites are still in a state of shock.

Indians often wonder why their country didn't grow as fast as Western liberal democracies did in the 19th century. The answer is that though India became a pluralistic democracy in 1947, vigorous competition among parties only started in the late 1980s. Since then, as the economy has seen the best performance in its history, democracy finally started paying dividends.

2 China: Tiger or snake? (The Wall Street Journal) Author Jonathan Fenby doesn’t think China is on the verge of ruling the world. He also doesn’t think it’s heading for collapse. But while he isn’t ready to predict the future with any confidence, Mr. Fenby, a British journalist turned author who wrote “The Penguin History of Modern China,” has taken on an ambitious job: summing up today’s China in a new book of about 400 pages, “Tiger Head, Snake Tails: China Today, How It Got There and Where It Is Heading”. The title, he said, is a good way of looking at the country: a giant tiger’s head that amazes the world, connected to “small, fragmented elements” – the snake tails – that “make it a far more complicated place than it might appear at first sight.”

According to Mr. Fenby, the book is aimed at readers who want a one-stop overview of China’s politics, economics, society, international relations, history, environmental issues, corruption and new leadership. No one book has drawn all these elements together, he said, so he felt compelled to write one himself. “China’s rise since the 1980s is the most important world development since the end of the Cold War,” he said. While the world might not know what to make of it, “China doesn’t quite know how to deal with the rest of the world and its newfound status.”

3 A newsman’s tale of the tsunami (The Guardian) It was an otherwise quiet Friday afternoon at the Associated Press bureau in central Tokyo. Camera crews had left the bustling capital for the regions, and the agency's TV newsroom was desolate apart from two people sitting silently at their computers. Then the earthquake hit. A devastating tsunami slammed into the north coast of Japan and sent violent tremors down the island. "We were wrapping stuff up, doing administrative work, and then the whole building started shaking," recalls Miles Edelsten, the veteran AP producer who has experienced innumerable earthquakes during his 12 years in Japan.

Edelsten believes he filmed the first footage of the tsunami to come out of the region. His shaky footage of terrified colleagues and rocking buildings was far from perfect – "It looks blue because I didn't have time to do the white balance" – but it became one of the defining images of the first natural disaster to play out live on TV news channels across the globe. "I thought, the world has never seen a live tsunami before – there's no way they can miss this," he says. "The first thing the world saw [of the tsunami] was our office shaking and the terrified faces of our Japanese colleagues." Edelsten broke with agency procedure and bypassed permissions to beam the video out to the world. "Looking back, even at the time it was quite obvious we were the biggest story in the world," Edelsten says. "It's something that has never really been seen before, because the Asian tsunami wasn't really caught on camera."

4 Post-defeat alibis (MJ Akbar in Khaleej Times) There is one colourful aspect of elections that has been sadly neglected in the coverage of this vibrant game called democracy. This is the Post Campaign Trauma Syndrome, or PCTS, as it is known among experts. Needless to point out, this afflicts only losers. But here is what winners miss: the sudden flowering of creativity. Defeat is a splendid tonic for imagination, taking the also-ran towards the realms of if, but and into that wide, wide world of the infinite alibi.

Mayawati pointed out that she had not been erased from the electoral map of UP, as Lalu Prasad Yadav had been from Bihar. She had a point: she may have won only 80 seats but she came second in 208. The Congress has, by far the finest talent for alibis. The Congress rationale for its stunning defeat in Punjab was that the breakaway Akali Dal of Manpreet Badal had taken away its vote in 23 constituencies. Ahem. Did Manpreet take the Congress vote or Akali supporters? Who encouraged Manpreet when he turned prodigal? Congress explanations for the massacre in UP have to be, I suppose, even more ludicrous. One excuse is that the choice of candidates was poor. Who chose the candidates? Akhilesh Yadav did not select Congress candidates. Rahul Gandhi did. Rahul Gandhi was given total control of all aspects of the UP campaign, and a full repertoire of media accompaniment to trumpet his imminent arrival on the centre-stage of national and international affairs. The simple fact is that the Congress lost around seven per cent of its vote, largely because Muslims deserted the party, and that sent it back into the 20-30 seat band. If it wants to recover it must recognise facts.

5 Price for torture: 3 months, demotion (The Wall Street Journal) Quietly late last month, a Border Security Force court sentenced seven constables to 89 days in jail each for their part in the torture of a Bangladeshi man that was caught on video in January. Human rights groups have labeled the punishment insufficient and it is bound to again spark debate about the failure of India’s military courts to dispense justice. The 11-minute video, taken on a cell phone, allegedly by the perpetrators, gave a rare window into abuses that human rights groups say are commonplace on the porous border between India’s West Bengal state and Bangladesh, across which scores of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and cattle rustlers pass each day.

It shows the constables stripping a Bangladeshi man naked, trussing him to a stick and beating him repeatedly while he pleads for mercy. The video caused barely a ripple in India’s media or among politicians when it emerged in January, a fact which human rights groups say shows how desensitized India has become to cases of abuse by the BSF on the border. The court-martial verdict has not been reported in the Indian media. In Bangladesh, the video caused an outcry and created a headache for India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has been working hard to improve relations with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government. It’s also an embarrassment for Mr. Singh who in 2007 stated a “zero tolerance” policy for human rights abuses.

6 Salt-loving wheat may ease food crisis (The Hindu) Plant scientists have bred a strain of wheat that thrives in saline soils, boosting the quest to feed Earth's growing population at a time of water stress and climate change. Durum wheat with a salt-loving gene had yields which were up to 25% greater than ordinary counterparts, according to trials carried out in highly saline fields. Durum wheat — Triticum turgidum — is used for making pasta, bulgur and couscous. It is more salt-sensitive than bread wheat (Triticum aestivum).

By some estimates, world food requirements will soar by 70% by 2050 as the planet's population rises from seven billion today to nine billion. The challenge will be made even tougher by the impact of climate change on rainfall patterns. Salinity is already a bad problem in arid and semi-arid developing countries where soils are naturally salty or irrigation water has a high level of salt. The first beneficiaries of this could be Japanese farmers whose fields were submerged by last year's tsunami. Around 20,000 hectares of paddy fields in north-eastern Japan were flooded by seawater, wrecking their ability to produce crops with conventional rice cultivars.

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