1 San Francisco Chronicle on Rio de Janeiro’s slum clearance. Some 3,000 police and soldiers moved into one of Rio's largest slums on Sunday to assert control over lawless areas of the city ahead of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics. Elite police squads patrolled the alleys of the Rocinha slum and snipers perched on rooftops as tanks rolled through the narrow streets and helicopters flew overhead. The occupation of the sprawling slum, or favela, ended peacefully. By early afternoon, the police, accompanied by contingents from the Brazilian army and navy, had not fired a shot. Officials said that feat was made possible by months of intelligence gathering and the arrest last week of Antonio Bonfim Lopes, the drug lord of Nem, who was said to have effectively ruled Rocinha. The slum sits between the city and areas where many Olympic events will be held.
2 The Guardian on Chinese matchmaking. Thousands of singletons gathered at an inaugural matchmaking expo in Shanghai’s Thames Town at the weekend, an event so popular that organisers halted online registration after double the expected number signed up. Estimates of those attending ranged from 10,000 to 40,000. In downtown Shanghai, 24.3% of people over the age of 15 are unmarried. In far-flung areas, the figures are even more startling: just 11.9% of over 15s are unmarried in Chongming county. A lack of young women – a result of the skewed rate of baby boys born under China’s one-child policy – means an estimated 30 to 50 million men will be without a wife in 20 years.
3 Khaleej Times on the flip side of globalisation. The failure of the G-20 and the eurozone to resolve their problems, highlighted by the abortive summit in Cannes, throws into sharp relief the flip side of globalisation. The seemingly inexorable increase in the flow of goods and finance ’round the planet that marked the first decade of this century has been replaced by the ever-rising risk of contraction. That risk is all the greater precisely because of the way global interconnections have flourished, especially since China joined the World Trade Organisation at the end of 2001, and the current inability of government leaders to handle adversity.
The economic and financial crisis is serious enough, but underlying it is a deeper issue of confidence in political leadership. If Barack Obama, Hu Jintao and the leaders of Europe cannot come up with at least the start of a common response to the gathering global downturn, where is the world to look for salvation? If the eurozone is still floundering to come to grips with crisis 18 months after Greece received its first bailout package, what belief can anybody have in the ability of the common currency’s institutions and managers?
4 The Dawn on the reasons for someone to join civil services in Pakistan. ‘Why do you want to join the Civil Service of Pakistan?’ To put it honestly, I want to make some quick money and grant favours to my relatives by getting some lucrative postings. To put it bluntly, I want to loot and plunder, and to put it politically correctly, I want to serve the people of Pakistan. This is the typical question-and-answer session that takes place between aspirants to the civil service and the interview panel of the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC), the body in charge of recruitment in the federal civil services of Pakistan. However, one obvious clarification is that only the politically correct part of the answer is said out loud. The rest is left unsaid because actions speak louder than words, so why waste time by spelling them out and shooting down your chances of getting selected and living your ‘dream’ later?
5 The Dawn on crisis of credibility for Indian politics. “The tragedy of India is its political system.” That admission by a government minister captured the frustration of delegates at this week’s India’s World Economic Forum (WEF), where blame has been heaped on corruption and the policy paralysis in New Delhi for a darkening economic outlook. The government was running scared just a few months ago when a group of activists whipped up popular rage over a rash of corruption scandals, bringing millions of people out onto the streets. The crowds have long gone, but the pressure is far from off Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his government. And some of India’s top industrialists warned that Asia’s third-biggest economy needs to quicken reform and improve governance.
GDP growth may come in at 7.2 per cent in the current fiscal year, a respectable enough number but a sharp fall from 8.5 per cent in 2009/10. Industrial output has slowed sharply, consumer confidence is waning and inflation remains near double digits despite 13 interest rate increases. “We shouldn’t say that because the institutions of democracy are there, we will be paralysed,” said Mukesh Ambani, head of Reliance Industries and India’s richest man. “And because there is an opposition and a party in power, we would do nothing. That’s what worries me.”
6 The Times of India on declining EQ of Indian kids. Indian parents often goad their babies to not grow up fast. If childhood is about magic, it is vanishing even before it is lived. In fact children are indeed growing up fast, speeding past the springtime of their lives, say psychiatrists who connect that to the falling levels of emotional quotient. The warm hugs, the tiny kisses, a ride on the Ferris wheel, a family camping trip, vanishing into a book with mum, playing chess against dad, are all now just cloying instances tucked away in fables. "The EQ among our children is on the decline. They have a lower threshold for tolerance, they are easily depressed, their coping ability has reduced and complexity has gone up. Seven- and eight-year-olds talk of violent acts and of dying these days," says psychiatrist Dr Nirmala Rao. The new toys like Angry Birds, Crime Life: Gang Wars and other ultra-violent games don't score too well in enriching EQ.
7 The Wall Street Journal on the unbearable cheapness of life in India. Is life cheap in India? As a possible answer, here are some recent grisly headlines from Mumbai: Eleven construction workers died when a wall collapsed in the suburb of Thane. Five workers were killed when a service lift failed and crashed to the ground. An 8-ton iron beam crushed four workers and killed two of them on the spot. Six construction workers died when scaffolding collapsed. I picked these stories more or less at random and they’re all from this year. If you scour the headlines in any major city, you’ll find such tragic stories in abundance. And those of us who live in the metros see workers in hazardous and unsafe conditions all the time.
The perception that India is a dangerous place for its workers is borne out by statistical evidence. Many governments, including India, notoriously underreport workplace injuries to the International Labour Organisation. For example, in 2001 India reported 222 work-related accidents to the ILO. Scholars estimate the true figure to be closer to 40,000 with a fatality rate 10 per 100,000 workers. By comparison, fatality rates in the same year in the United States were estimated at just under 5 per 100,000 workers, half the Indian rate. The good news is that as countries get richer, labour standards tend to improve. Britain in the nineteenth century had labor standards as abysmal as India’s today. The bottom line is that, regrettably, life is cheap in India. With more rapid economic development, it’ll become costlier and hopefully a day will come when an Indian life has the same value as a life in a rich country.
8 The Deepika reporting on a strike by nursing students in Delhi’s reputed Ram Manohar Lohia hospital, where the principal allegedly tore the uniform of a Keralite student, saying it was dirty. (Nurses have gone on strike in recent times in different Indian cities including Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkatha demanding better salaries and benefits, and have managed to secure their demands. Significantly, the nurses’ strikes have been carried on impromptu, and succeeded on their own merit without the help of politicians, as has been the case with recent protests around the world. Kerala politicians, however, have rushed to Delhi and Mumbai to join hands with the protestors. The protests in Ram Manohar Lohia hospital have been suspended after an inquiry was announced.)
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