1 India growth may be slowest in two years (Reuters) India's economy likely grew at its slowest pace in more than two years during the final months of 2011 as high interest rates and booming input costs hampered manufacturing activity, a Reuters poll predicted. Gross domestic product in Asia's third-largest economy grew at an annual 6.4% in the quarter to end-December, according to the poll of 26 economists. That would be a significant slowdown from 6.9% in the previous quarter and would mark the fourth straight quarter of growth below 8%. "
The story is similar for China, where the economy grew at its weakest pace in 2-1/2 years in the same period, at 8.9%, as it struggles with sagging real estate and export growth. While the low growth rates in Asia's powerhouses are better than the feeble-to-no-growth in developed nations, there is a growing sense of pessimism India and China lack the momentum to support the faltering global economy.
2 Through the eyes of Asian Tiger Cubs (Khaleej Times) The rising generation of Asians has an expansive view of a broader Asia. They want to see more regional cooperation and integration. Through the Eyes of Tiger Cubs: Views of Asia’s Next Generation draws excerpts from more than 80 essays that tackle education, inequality, demographics, environment, governance, geopolitics and Asian identity. While Americans and Europeans fret about the rise of Asia, the young Asians featured in this book worry about a poor educational system, ineffective governance, bad jobs and environmental degradation. Particularly notable is a tectonic generational shift.
The Tiger Cubs’ grandparents came of age at a time of war, revolution, decolonisation and chronic poverty. The Tiger Cubs grew up in an era of unusual peace and unprecedented prosperity. They don’t remember Maoism or the Soviet Union. But they know the Internet and satellite TV and live in a world of always-on information. All but the poorest villagers have an idea of a world of prosperity and freedom. “There is no doubt,” writes India’s Rohit Pathak, “that the coming decade will be Asia’s.” But the biggest single stumbling block is poor governance.
3 India politicians can sell brands (Khaleej Times) It is amazing how the Indian politicians manage to remain in the public eye and also appear on the small screen, without most giving the impression of being drained out. They literally appear to be ever ready with words to aggressively lash out against their rivals. What is it that keeps them going, as the age pattern suggests, from their twenties to near 80s? They have the zest to remain strongly in the race as ace politicians till literally their life’s end. Equally baffling is their dress code, from hairstyle to dust free footwear, as if they have stepped out of some laundry, all in one piece.
Seriously speaking, they need to exploit this aspect commercially. Add the sale tag to politicians’ energy supplements, shoes/sandals, wrinkle-free clothes and of course lozenges to keep the throat and voice clear enough for speech as much as possible. Whether the politicians’ rhetoric sells enough to win them needed votes is not known but these commodities are bound to sell like hot cakes.
4 Softer side of Peshawar (Khaleej Times) Foreign reporters coming to Pakistan are often required to undergo survival training to prepare them for kidnappings, explosions and walking through mine fields. But talk about the city to archaeologists and historians, and an entirely different kind of fever might take hold of you. One of South Asia’s oldest living cities, Peshawar is renowned for the Gandhara art excavated nearby — pieces that reveal an astonishing syncretism: Buddhist sculptures showing Hindu gods, Greek mythological figures (Atlas is a favourite), Persian columns and other influences besides. And the Peshawar Museum has the world’s largest and most breathtaking collection of Gandhara art.
5 Gujarat wounds fester, 10 years on (The Wall Street Journal) A decade ago, just before religious riots claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, Imtiaz Ahmed Hussain Qureshi says he gifted a silver necklace as a wedding present to his Hindu neighbour’s daughter. That was the last act of friendship between the two households in Naroda, a suburb of Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s leading industrial town. Two months later, a Muslim mob attacked and killed 59 Hindus on a train near the Gujarati town of Godhra, about 135 kilometers from Ahmedabad. That sparked reprisal killings across the state, mostly of Muslims.
Naroda was no exception. Mr. Qureshi claims he saw the neighbour whose daughter had got married set fire to his house in a rampage of looting, burning and killing that targeted the area’s minority Muslim community on Feb. 28, 2002. When the dust settled, 11 people from Naroda’s 200 or so Muslim families were dead. Mr. Qureshi, a tall, well-built 38-year-old, and others in the Muslim community soon after filed a criminal lawsuit that alleges 86 people in the village, including his neighbour, took part in the murder, rape and looting. Mr. Qureshi is also an eyewitness in the case. Ten years later, the case is still on trial at the Ahmedabad High Court. The lack of a verdict has stopped wounds from healing.
In 2008, Mr. Qureshi bought his own house, a one-room-and-kitchen affair. It’s much smaller than the house that he abandoned in Naroda, which he rebuilt in 2004 with the help of an Islamic organization. But he prefers to stay away from the scene of the violence, although his brother and mother now live in part of the rebuilt house. “I’m still scared,” he says. “Not from the common public, but from the people involved.” Mr. Qureshi’s Hindu neighbor continues to live in his house in Naroda. Since the day of the riots, the two have not exchanged a single word, Mr. Qureshi claims. Every time their paths cross, Mr. Qureshi says, they both look away. That’s the same story for most of the other Hindus in the neighborhood, he adds. “We coexist, but in name only,” says Mr. Qureshi. “There is no interaction, no business, no talk between us at all.”
6 Dire work conditions of ship-breakers (Dawn) Mehdi Hassan was clinging to a greasy rope, toiling high inside the hull of an oil tanker, when he became another victim of lax safety standards at Pakistan’s Gaddani ship breaking yard. He suddenly slipped and fell to the floor in the dark. Unable to move all night with broken bones, and with no one around to help, he choked to death on toxic fumes. A steel section was cut out from the ship and when it fell into the sea, light came into the hull and co-workers saw Mehdi’s body.
Pakistan is full of dangers, with tens of thousands of victims of suicide bombings, sectarian violence and ethnic bloodshed which make big headlines across the world. There is another less dramatic, but dark, side of the South Asian nation that rarely captures attention —the large number of impoverished people forced to endure horrible conditions at work to survive. Fifteen thousand of them risk their lives every day, tearing down ships at Gaddani beach on the Arabian Sea coast, a 10 km-long death trap. They earn as little as $4 a day. Any second a giant steel plate can fall and crush dozens of people at a time. High tension cables often snap and decapitate. Deadly chemicals can slowly kill workers. Dozens died last year disembowelling vessels at an astonishing pace at the ship breaking yard, one of the biggest in the world.
Apprentice Abdul Rab, 20, is still haunted by the whipping sound he heard just before a cable sliced a co-worker in half. “It was so quick that he didn’t even get a chance to scream,” he said. Today, ship breaking companies in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh —the industry leaders —are vying for more vessels as intense competition between them drives wages even lower. Labourers at Gaddani who used to make $6 a day are now putting in the same hours for $4, a tough drop in the face of rising costs in Pakistan, especially for basic items like food.
7 Real cost of Fukushima disaster (Johannesburg Times) When Japanese nuclear disaster survivor Ayako Oga was invited to walk outside a Johannesburg restaurant on Sunday, she hesitated because she avoids the outdoors. In Japan, she usually stays indoors "because I cannot touch handrails or anything outside" because she fears radiation from the disaster. Oga used to live 5km from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Now, in Fukushima "almost all children do not play outside and indoor amusement parks are doing a roaring business", said Oga.
"Schools monitor the time children spend outside. Children in Fukushima have frequent nosebleeds and dark circles under their eyes, but it is impossible to prove these are caused by radiation." She told journalists that every day citizens measure the radiation levels themselves as they no longer trust the government to do so honestly. Oga said some Fukushima farmers who were no longer able to sell their produce and could not claim sufficient compensation had committed suicide in despair.
8 India banks to lose $2bn on 2G loans (The Financial Express and Financial Chronicle) Global rating agency Moody’s Investors Service said Indian banks will find it tough to recover roughly $2bn lent to mobile telephony companies whose licences were cancelled by the Supreme Court. The apex court on February 2 cancelled 122 second-generation (2G) licences of eight companies after they were issued on a first-come-first-serve scheme in 2008 and asked the government to auction spectrum or airwaves that carry radio signals.
The agency said at least $2bn out of $18bn lent specifically to companies, which won licences in 2008, was risky. “We view these loans to be particularly at risk because they were extended mainly to small operators, many of which have no other sources of income than the activities that their licenses allowed them to conduct. “And in most cases, the only collateral backing the loans, were the very licenses that are now no longer valid,” the report said.
9 The trouble with English papers (Business Standard) If you really look at readership and time spent in most markets, English newspapers don’t look so good. In the last six years, while the circulation of English newspapers has gone up by over 70%, readership has crawled by just two per cent, going by Audit Bureau of Circulations data and the IRS. More importantly, the time spent reading English papers fell from about 46 minutes a day in 2006 to 43 minutes in 2011, says the IRS. It is not a big fall, but combined with crawling readership it is an indication that “stickiness” for newspapers is falling.
You could argue, of course, that the ad market has been expanding. The money advertisers spend on the print media (largely newspapers) rose from Rs 8,500 crore in 2006 to Rs 12,000 crore in 2011. While it is difficult to quantify, my guess would be that a large part of this growth is driven by regional-language newspapers. They, not English papers, have been the growth engine that has made India one of the most exciting print markets in the world.
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