1 Paul Krugman writing on Iceland in The New York Times, titled ‘The Path not taken’. Iceland was supposed to be the ultimate economic disaster story: its runaway bankers saddled the country with huge debts and seemed to leave the nation in a hopeless position. But a funny thing happened on the way to economic Armageddon: Iceland’s very desperation made conventional behavior impossible, freeing the nation to break the rules. Where everyone else bailed out the bankers and made the public pay the price, Iceland let the banks go bust and actually expanded its social safety net. Where everyone else was fixated on trying to placate international investors, Iceland imposed temporary controls on the movement of capital to give itself room to maneuver. So how’s it going? Iceland hasn’t avoided major economic damage or a significant drop in living standards. But it has managed to limit both the rise in unemployment and the suffering of the most vulnerable; the social safety net has survived intact, as has the basic decency of its society.
2 The New York Times on Rajat Gupta, a mere affluent. Rajat Gupta was rich by almost any standard. He just wasn’t rich compared with many of the people who surrounded him. He knew it, and he didn’t seem to like it. More than a few of his friends and colleagues had tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. They included his fellow board members at Goldman Sachs, the alumni of McKinsey & Company — a firm that Mr. Gupta ran and that paid him a few millions of dollars a year — who then made fortunes on Wall Street and, perhaps most important, his friend Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge-fund manager sentenced to 11 years in prison for insider trading. What seems beyond doubt, however, is that Mr Gupta was envious of the wealth that his peers were amassing. In that way, Mr. Gupta is a symbol of a different kind of income inequality from the one at the heart of the Occupy Wall Street protests, where demonstrators proclaim themselves part of the “other 99 percent” and criticize the top 1 percent of earners.
Mr. Gupta was surely part of the 1 percent. But seems to have felt as if he was part of the other 99 percent of that 1 percent. Such envy extends well beyond people accused of committing crimes. The inequality among the rich is a major force pushing many graduates of the country’s top colleges to Wall Street and drawing middle-aged professionals from other lines of work to finance. Consider the numbers. Three decades ago, a taxpayer at the cutoff for the top 0.01 percent of earners — that is, in the top 1/10,000th — was making about 10 times as much as someone at the cutoff for the top 1 percent. Since then, the top 1 percent has done very well, nearly doubling its income in inflation-adjusted terms. Yet the very rich have done vastly better: someone at the cutoff for the top 0.01 percent now makes 30 times as much as someone at the top 1 percent, according to the latest numbers.
3 Johannesburg Times on Africa’s male victims of rape speaking up. Job is a big and tall man from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, strong and healthy looking. Once he begins to speak, however, the facade falls and the 50-year-old shows himself to be in tatters, suffering deep physical and mental wounds from a secret weapon of war being employed in central Africa. So secret, many deny it exists. But more people like Job are coming forward to shed light on an often neglected group of victims. Repeatedly gang-raped by Congolese government soldiers in 2007, Job is being cared for now by doctors and counsellors to help him heal from an attack by an army supposedly fighting insurgents, but also meting out wrath on civilians. "I was arrested in an operation by the soldiers and, while in prison, two soldiers picked me, tied my hands and legs and one after another raped me. I screamed but no one helped me. I fainted. The same thing happened to me the following day and for weeks. I was bleeding all the time," says Job. Rape as a weapon of war has been used in the African Great Lakes region for many years, but most of the focus of aid groups has been on female victims. Slowly, however, men are seeking help. Many victims have a simple goal: being able to lead a normal life, without ending up in an asylum. "Male victims have been neglected for a long time in all regions of the world. Worse, advocates say, rich world donors often only donate to groups treating female victims of rape, thus potentially sidelining a whole segment of society in need.
4 Straits Times on Samsung as the world’s top smart-phone maker. Samsung Electronics Co surpassed Apple Inc as the world's top smart-phone maker with more than 40 per cent shipment growth, and forecast strong sales in the fourth quarter, as it aims to consolidate its lead against rivals. Samsung, which had little traction in the booming smart-phone market until early last year, has since staged a strong comeback.
5 Straits Times reporting on Taiwan showcasing Ai Weiwei art. A new exhibition of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's work launched in Taiwan on Friday, featuring a photo of the dissident giving a middle-finger gesture to the portrait of Mao Zedong in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The show at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum also showcases other controversial works by Ai, including a picture of Wei Jingsheng, one of China's best-known democracy activists, who spent 15 years in a Chinese jail before being exiled to the United States. Ai, who is banned from leaving Beijing, suggested that his absence from the exhibition, his largest solo show ever in a Chinese community, had significance in itself. '(My absence) will give the exhibition a special meaning,' he said in a statement.
6 Ranjani Iyer Mohanty in The Wall Street Journal on Delhi’s Darwinian rules of the road. During my early days in India, someone asked me why – if I could drive in Toronto and Amsterdam and Lisbon – did I not drive in Delhi? When I replied diplomatically that I didn’t yet understand the rules of driving here, the elderly gentleman smiled sagely and said, “That’s the beauty of it: there are no rules.” But even while I laughed politely, I realized that it was not true: There are indeed rules to driving in Delhi. One of the most important is that the lane markings on the road are not meant to specify lanes to drive in: they are to be treated merely like markings on a ruler. The strategy of choice is to drive in the middle of two lanes, thereby keeping your options open to move into either lane, at your will or when the car behind you honks loudly. Another rule is to avoid coming to a full stop if at all possible. If the car in front of you is slowing down, simply veer around it, even if that means going onto the wrong side of the road. You can overtake someone from the left or right once you feel you’ve correctly understood his psychological make-up and gauged his position on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He may be happy with his current level of achievement and so will let you overtake. But if he is striving to reach the next or going for broke for “self-actualization,” you don’t stand a chance. Note: using signal lights is prohibited for both you and your opponent. Signalling is for the faint of heart because it gives away your game and thereby takes away the fun. A critical rule of the road here: don’t drive your car if the horn is not working. Rules of traffic circles are also quite straightforward: The largest vehicle gets right of way, as do drivers with serious attitude. (The author has obviously not been in Chennai.)
7 The Wall Street Journal on Metallica’s F1 Delhi fiasco. Dow Jones Newswires metal-head Santanu Choudhury was there and sent us this eyewitness account of the fiasco: “The Metallica concert has become yet another example of chaos and mismanagement in organizing events in India, especially in the National Capital Region. The gates were scheduled to open at 3 p.m. as printed on the tickets. I was there around 4 p.m. and by 6 p.m. when the gates didn’t open, thousands of fans who had gathered began shouting slogans and later grew restive and began kicking the barriers and climbing on top of cars, screaming. Around 6.30 p.m., some guy from inside announced on the public address system that due to some technical glitches the show has been postponed to 4 p.m. Saturday. Post the announcement, there was lot of confusion among the fans, which included several foreigners. I later came to know that some fans who managed to enter the venue earlier damaged equipment and also parts of the stage and the barriers. Forgive at least a moment to remember the multitude of embarrassments Delhi suffered last year leading up to the Commonwealth Games. F1 was supposed to represent the triumph of the private sector in organizing mega-events over the public sector. Em, right.
8 Drudge Report story on an Indian firm launching gold, diamond cash machine. An Indian company has launched what it says is the world’s first ‘cash machine” that dispenses gold and silver coins and diamond-studded jewellery. The Gitanjali Group launched the Gold and Diamond automatic teller machine at a central Mumbai shopping mall for the annual Hindu festival of lights, Diwali. "The machine is a first of its kind anywhere in the world and will further revolutionise the processes by which precious metals and jewellery is bought," said Gitanjali Export Corporation chief executive Sanjeev Agarwal. The ATM offers customers the choice of up to 36 products of varying sizes, designs and prices, from 1,000 rupees to 30,000 rupees ($20 to $600). Payment is either through credit or debit card or by depositing cash. Indians bought 540 tonnes of gold in the first half of 2011, up 21 percent from the same period last year, according to data from industry body the World Gold Council.
9 Drudge Report story that Asian Americans are the most bullied in US schools. Asian Americans endure far more bullying at US schools than members of other ethnic groups, with teenagers of the community three times as likely to face taunts on the Internet, new data shows. Policymakers see a range of reasons for the harassment, including language barriers faced by some Asian American students and a spike in racial abuse following the September 11, 2001 attacks against children perceived as Muslim. The research found that 54 percent of Asian American teenagers said they were bullied in the classroom, sharply above the 31.3 percent of whites who reported being picked on. The disparity was even more striking for cyber-bullying. Some 62 percent of Asian Americans reported online harassment once or twice a month, compared with 18.1 percent of whites.
10 The Hindu lead story that in 16 years, farm suicides in India have crossed a quarter million. (I don’t believe the figure, though.)
11 The Hindu editorial arguing why the Armed Forces Special Powers Act must go in Kashmir. Based on an analysis of central government data, The Hindu had reported that J&K was more peaceful than many ‘perfectly peaceful' States — among them, economically vibrant Haryana. In population-adjusted terms, violent deaths in J&K — those of terrorists and security force personnel, as well as murders of civilians, whether terrorism-related or otherwise — were at the same level as in Bihar, and not significantly higher than in Delhi. No one in New Delhi, though, wishes to be charged with overruling an assessment by the armed forces — an assessment which, regrettably, is driven more by fear than hard-headed strategic sense.
Three spurious arguments are being used to justify the status quo. First, the Army contends that the situation across the Line of Control needs a robust military presence. But Mr. Abdullah’s proposals would only lift AFSPA from two areas where the Army in any case has no security responsibilities. Secondly, it is claimed that without AFSPA, the Army will not be able to stage counter-terrorism operations in an emergency. Proponents of this argument forget that AFSPA did not have to be imposed to allow the Army to assist in the defence of Parliament House when it came under terrorist attack in 2001. Finally, some argue that the AFSPA-free enclaves will be magnets for terrorists. This, too, makes little sense, since the Army is not present in the enclaves anyway.
12 The Hindu on life after death for the Longwood Shola in the Nilgiris which until recently was in danger of vanishing altogether. The forest is an important water source, according to K. Senthil Prasad, who works with the NGO Keystone Foundation and is involved with wetland mapping, conservation and management in the Nilgiris. "The wetlands inside provide drinking water to thousands of villagers in downtown Kotagiri," he explains. "Preserving the forest is vital because it also controls the micro-climatic conditions of the town; it is a water resource and a wildlife corridor."
13 The Financial Express on why India is fixated on a ‘national F1 brand’. Very soon, on the Buddh International circuit near Delhi, ‘India’ will compete with Ferrari, Mercedes, Sauber, Renault and many such ‘corporate’ names. No, the contest will not be between France, Germany and India—it will be between some teams branded by global corporations and a team bearing a country brand. We understand that India is pretty much a global brand today—but does it justify naming an F1 team Force India? India is possibly the only ‘nation’ that is open to sponsorship. The greatest example of that is the Indian cricket team. The team is owned by a private body called the BCCI—but they are pretty much free to sell national pride and jingoism to a sponsor. Naming a team Force India is an extension of the same thought process. F1 is a marginal sporting activity in India. The only hope the sponsors and the team owners have is to create a national feeling so that people get interested in the sport and the team. But how exactly is the national pride being awakened? The driver Adrian Sutil is from Germany and Paul di Resta is from Scotland. The car has a Mercedes-Benz engine and Pirelli tyres. The closest it comes to anything national is the money put in by Vijay Mallya and Sahara. Unless, of course, we consider the tricolour used in the logo, and the car graphics are sufficiently national.
14 Aakar Patel writing in Mint explaining why the ‘honour’ killing Bill won’t work. The Congress government has drafted a Bill against honour killing. It is called “The Prevention of Crimes in the Name of ‘Honour’ and Tradition Bill”. Strangely, all the acts which find mention in this Bill—murder, coercion, abetting murder — are already punishable. What is new is that soon we will be prosecuting people specifically for doing honour killing. Will it work? No. At a recent conference, former chief justice KG Balakrishnan, who heads India’s Human Rights Commission, said a separate law wasn’t needed. All the punishments were already in place. However, Girija Vyas, the force behind this Bill, says: “A law is the need of the hour,” adding, “I get at least two calls every week.” Putting quote marks around “honour” does not make it less appealing to the peasant. This law is an English-medium solution to a Hindi-medium crime. I can assure Vyas, whose name indicates she is Brahmin, that her law will not work. In fact, I am willing to bet her that the effect will be the opposite: It will encourage honour killing. Conviction under this law will be displayed by the peasant with great pride, because the highest point of honour is martyrdom.
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