1 Sluggish monsoon may dent India recovery plans
(Debiprasad Nayak in The Wall Street Journal) It’s about to start raining in India,
a lot, as the monsoon is set to hit the Kerala coast in next two days. But
don’t break out the umbrellas and turn down the thermostats in Delhi just yet.
This year’s monsoon is expected to creep across the country more slowly than
usual.
That’s bad news for Indian farmers and global
markets. A delayed onset of the monsoon in the farming belt of northern India
will delay planting, which could cause prices to shoot up for products like
rice, cotton and sugar. India ranks among the largest producers for these
commodities. Indian farmers rely on rain to grow their crops, and the monsoon
season accounts for about 70% of total rainfall.
A weak monsoon could push up food prices and with it
inflation, testing the new government’s ability to promote economic growth. If
the harvest is bad, the effect on the economy will be wide-ranging. The
country’s jobs market could be hurt, since over half of the country’s workforce
is employed in agriculture. Fewer jobs mean fewer rupees to spend on things
other than food. Manufacturers of everything from soap to SUVs are increasingly
reliant on rising rural demand for their goods. A slow monsoon could also pinch
the sales of these companies.
This year, the summer monsoon is already behind its
schedule, as weak winds left the monsoon stranded in the Andaman Sea. The India
Meteorological Department is predicting less rainfall this year, in part due to
El Niño, a weather pattern that reduces the amount of rain in India.
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2014/06/04/sluggish-monsoon-could-hamper-bjps-economic-recovery-plans/
2 Worst sales for Tesco in decades (Sarah Butler
& Sean Farrell in The Guardian) The pressure has increased on Tesco chief
executive Philip Clarke after he revealed the supermarket's worst sales
performance in decades, despite spending over £1bn on store revamps and price
cuts in a fightback against discounters such as Aldi and Lidl.
Tesco's sales fell by 3.8% in the three months to 24
May on a like-for-like basis, an acceleration of the 3% slide in the previous
quarter. Several analysts noted that the fall would have been 4% if Tesco had
used the same standards used by most retailers, which exclude fuel, VAT and
sales paid for with vouchers.
Clarke admitted the sales decline was the worst he
could remember in a more than 30-year career at the supermarket group, where he
first started working as a schoolboy shelf-stacker in 1974. Bruno Monteyne, an
analyst at Bernstein Research, calculates that only half of the latest sales
falls were the result of price cuts, disruption caused by store revamps and
less use of discount vouchers. It means that, even without those self-inflicted
hits, Tesco would still be losing sales.
Tesco is not the only major supermarket struggling
to tackle rapid change in the industry amid the rise of discounters such as
Aldi, Lidl Poundland and B&M Stores as well as the rise of online shopping
and convenience stores. Some big investors are losing patience with Clarke, who
is 18 months into his plan to revive Tesco after UK profit fell for the first
time in 20 years.
Recent industry data shows that Tesco appears to
have lost more than 1m customer visits per week, worth £25m in sales, with its
market share showing the biggest fall for at least 20 years. A survey by Kantar
Worldpanel showed the grocery market was at its weakest for at least 11 years
and that excluding inflation and population growth the market was stagnant.
3 Tiananmen: The revolution that almost succeeded
(John Simpson on BBC) Tiananmen was a revolution which almost succeeded. It shook
the Chinese system to the core. The central aspect of it was the shooting down
in cold blood of young, non-violent students by the Chinese army on the night
of 3-4 June 1989. But other important aspects have been forgotten. One was how
much support existed for the students within the Chinese political system. Another
was the violent outpouring of anger against the Communist system from ordinary
people right across China.
I spent an entire month wandering round the square,
listening to the students who were occupying it. They were certain that the
Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, the instinctive authoritarian who was
nevertheless a committed reformer, was finished. But he wasn't. After a month
during which China's government was paralysed, Deng finally found a general and
a force of soldiers who were prepared to open fire on the students and clear
the square.
That night I crouched behind a low wall and watched
as the shooting began. My camera crew and I finally left the square when we ran
out of videotape. We took refuge in the Beijing Hotel. To this day, the Chinese
government maintains that no-one died in Tiananmen Square. Maybe this is literally
true, because the real killing ground wasn't the square itself but Chang'an
Avenue, which runs along the front of the square. Without the massacre, Deng
Xiaoping would not have survived in power.
Early on in the demonstrations, in May, even many of
the party's top officials had turned against him. I watched as a million
cheering spectators crammed into the square. There was floats carrying senior
army officers, high court judges and representatives from across the party
structure. There was even one from the secret police. The officials on the
floats were all waving and cheering and shouting demands that Deng Xiaoping
should go. Whenever I meet senior Chinese officials nowadays I wonder if they
were in Tiananmen Square that day, supporting the students.
Over the years, as these officials worked their way
up through the system, they have introduced many of the changes the students
were demanding. But people still can't choose their own form of government, or
even advocate their right to do so too publicly. Many Chinese officials still
honestly believe that China can only be held together by firm government. If
everyone were allowed to speak out and demand total freedom, the argument goes,
the system would collapse and China could easily fall apart.
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