1 When the young lose interest in cars (The New York Times) Ross Martin, 37, is a published poet and a former drummer in an alternative rock band. He and his team are trying to help General Motors solve one of the most vexing problems facing the car industry: many young consumers today just do not care that much about cars. That is a major shift from the days when the car stood at the center of youth culture and wheels served as the ultimate gateway to freedom and independence. Today Facebook, Twitter and text messaging allow teenagers and 20-somethings to connect without wheels. High gas prices and environmental concerns don’t help matters. “They think of a car as a giant bummer,” said Mr. Martin. “Think about your dashboard. It’s filled with nothing but bad news.”
There is data to support Mr. Martin’s observations. In 2008, 46.3% of potential drivers 19 years old and younger had drivers’ licenses, compared with 64.4% in 1998, according to the Federal Highway Administration, and drivers ages 21 to 30 drove 12 percent fewer miles in 2009 than they did in 1995. Forty-six percent of drivers aged 18 to 24 said they would choose Internet access over owning a car, according to the research firm Gartner. Automobiles have fallen in the public estimation of younger people. In a survey of 3,000 consumers born from 1981 to 2000 — a generation marketers call “millennials”— Scratch asked which of 31 brands they preferred. Not one car brand ranked in the top 10, lagging far behind companies like Google and Nike.
2 Why India has become world’s top arms buyer (The New York Times) India has replaced China as the world’s largest arms buyer, accounting for 10% of all arms purchases during the past five years, a Swedish research group said. India purchased some $12.7 billion in arms, 80% of that from Russia, during 2007-2011, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. China’s arms purchases during that time were $6.3 billion, 78% of which came from Russia.
India has tried, but failed, to create a sizable domestic manufacturing industry for weapons or even basic military goods, while China has increased production of defense supplies. About 75% of India’s weapons purchases came from imports during 2007-11, said Laxman Kumar Behra of the Institute of Defense Studies and Analysis, a government-funded research organization. Some analysts in India attribute the failure to create a domestic defense industry to government involvement. “India’s public sector is very inefficient and the private sector is by and large kept out of arms production,” Mr. Behra said.
3 Outrage over India coal scam (BBC) There was outrage in India's parliament after a draft report by government auditors estimated India lost $210bn by selling coalfields too cheaply. Opposition politicians accused the government of "looting the country" by selling coalfields to companies without competitive bidding. Private and state companies benefited from the allocations between 2004 and 2010, says a Times of India report. But the auditor says the leaked draft is "exceedingly misleading". The Times of India, quoting the CAG draft, says the $210bn figure is a "conservative estimate, since it takes into account prices for the lowest grade of coal and not the median grade". India is one of the largest producers of coal in the world.
This is just the latest in a series of financial scandals to hit the Congress-led government. India has been hit by a number of mining scandals in recent months. Last August the chief minister of Karnataka state, BS Yeddyurappa, quit after he was implicated in an illegal mining scandal that an ombudsman said cost the state $400m - he denies the charges. And in November a report claimed that nearly half the iron ore exported from the western state of Goa is illegally mined. It was a CAG report that exposed the country's biggest corruption case to date, the so-called 2G scandal, in which mobile phone licenses were sold at a fraction of their value at an estimated cost to the exchequer of nearly $40bn in lost revenue.
4 Asia big three close to deal (BBC) Japan, China and South Korea have moved closer to signing a trilateral investment agreement that could pave the way for a free-trade deal. If signed it would be the first economic agreement that is backed by law between three of Asia's largest economies. The countries have been working on an agreement since 2008. Many Asian nations have been trying to improve ties as growth has slowed in markets such as the US and Europe. Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said the three countries agreed to the terms of the investment pact at a meeting in Beijing earlier this week. The ministry did not provide details on the agreement but it is expected to protect the intellectual property rights of Japanese and South Korean companies currently running businesses in China.
5 Those were the books (Kyle Jarrard in Khaleej Times) That’s it, the world is truly coming to an end. Encyclopedia Britannica is going online only, after 244 years of print publication. A sadness comes over me, as when I see a book, any paper book, tossed into the maw of the Internet. We didn’t have Britannica in our house when I was growing up. It was a bit high-brow for our family. In our home we had World Book, which is still around in the actual real publishing world. I don’t recall exactly when it showed up, or how, but I think a man wearing a hat appeared at our doorstep in Texas in the 1960s offering them for sale. Deeply concerned about our education, Mom figured out how to pay for the books out of her meager piano-lesson earnings. Thank you.
They were great volumes. Ivory white, slick pages, colourful, full of things that could take you from here to there and back again. My sister and I competed reading each lettered volume, but she gave up first and I kept going. World Book put out a yearly supplement. It was even more exciting sometimes than the main set. Every year was a banner year for World Book because it was a banner world back then. Our humble home would have been a seriously lesser place without those venerable volumes. I don’t know where those World Books got off to after we all left home for institutions of higher education. They may be at my sister’s. I’ll have to ask. And tell her about Britannica.
6 Parallel universes in Pakistan (Dawn) Beyond the usual headlines on Pakistan, what many outsiders are missing is another story: an unprecedented consumption boom has been under way in Pakistan since the mid-2000s. How does one reconcile this reality that the economy is tanking, and has never before posted a worse set of yearly economic data in its history? Or, that too many Pakistanis are falling through the cracks? The data from household surveys is revealing, and points to two parallel universes existing side by side in Pakistan: an expanding middle class with a voracious appetite for consumption, and a large swathe of population that is increasingly food-insecure, let alone facing rising deprivation on other measures.
The estimates of the size of Pakistan’s middle class are truly astounding. The adjusted figure for the middle class is a staggering 70 million people, or 40% of the population. In absolute terms, it is the fourth largest middle class cohort in Asia, behind China, India and Indonesia. Affluent, educated, urbanised, and increasingly ‘globalised’, Pakistan’s middle class is not only growing, but is already a voracious consumer. The ADB report estimated total consumption spending by this group at $75bn. Nonetheless, the growth in incomes and opportunities will continue to increasingly be skewed towards the more affluent segments of the population, with inequality rising ever more sharply.
7 Life and death on India’s slow train to prosperity (Reuters) As the Kalka Mail train pulls into Delhi railway station at dawn, it is every man, woman and child for themselves. Before the train has stopped, crowds elbow and jostle into packed compartments destined for Kolkata, 1,500 km and 25 hours away on one of the largest, most decrepit and dangerous rail networks in the world. Another day on Indian Railways has begun – another day on which the nation’s aspirations to become a wealthy economy risk being derailed by a neglected asset whose potential remains to be unlocked by bold political leadership and fresh capital. Indeed, if that potential was unleashed, estimates suggest it could add as much as two per cent to India’s flagging economic growth.
By the end of the day, about 40 people on average will have died somewhere on the network of 64,000 km of track. Many will be slum-dwellers and poor villagers who live near the lines and use them as places to wash and as open toilets. Of the 20 million people who travel daily on the network, many will arrive hours, even a day, behind schedule, having clattered along tracks and been guided by signalling systems built before India gained independence from Britain in 1947.
For many Indians, who have seen their nation develop rapidly since the late 1990s to become Asia’s third-largest econom, the ramshackle state of Indian Railways has become an embarrassment. That is felt especially keenly when comparisons are made with neighbouring China, where bullet trains zip across the country at around 300 km per hour. By contrast, India’s fastest train runs – on just one stretch – at a top speed of 161 km per hour. Critics regard Indian Railways as emblematic of the nation’s problems overall: stifling bureaucracy, inefficiency and most importantly a lack of public funding and a political unwillingness to open up to abundant private capital.
A train returning from Kolkata is running five hours late. “The inconvenience caused is deeply regretted,” announces a voice from loudspeakers.
8 The Mumbai of our dreams (The Wall Street Journal) The Mumbai of our dreams is here, currently on display at the National Gallery of Modern Art Mumbai. It’s a city of palm-lined walkways, sparkling waters, wooden jetties and emerald greenery as far as the eye can see. The beaches are clean, the pavements smooth and slum-free and the forests pristine. It’s a Mumbai of an alternate reality, a city we deserve, dammit, but somehow just can’t seem to make happen.
And just in case you get carried away the vast architectural renderings and statistics offer a sobering perspective. The city’s open spaces (encroached land thrown in) amounts to about 19 kilometers of our total land area or, in other words, about 1.58 square meters per person. Under current development plans, that figure would shrink to 0.87. In contrast, London offers up its residents nearly 32 square meters per person, New York, 26. The price tag for this spiffy-looking Mumbai is 23.9 billion rupees ($477 million). In short, the Mumbai of our dreams may stay just that: a dream.
9 The UN versus Sri Lanka (The Wall Street Journal) The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) voted in favor of a US-backed resolution on alleged war crimes and rights abuses in Sri Lanka's 25-year civil war, which ended in 2009. The resolution innocuously urges Sri Lanka to carry out the recommendations of its own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission. But it also calls for an investigation into allegations not covered by the commission, which only risks reopening sectarian divisions. The UN and foreign governments would do more good by focusing on current policies, leaving a thorough accounting of the war years for when there is a solid consensus for such a process within the country.
Sri Lanka's civil war killed more than 70,000 people and left hundreds of thousands displaced. The Buddhist Sinhalese majority, led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, eventually defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and other militant groups fighting for an independent homeland for the largely Hindu Tamil minority in the north and east of the country. The LTTE was among the world's most vicious terrorist organizations. It pioneered modern suicide bombing as a war tactic. It also forcibly recruited thousands of child soldiers and used human shields to escape army shelling. Sri Lanka isn't ready for a blame game over a long war in which both sides were accused of abuses. The country's most pressing need is not a UN resolution, it is to win the post-war peace. Only once Mr. Rajapaksa or his successor begins to take seriously the task of reconciling with the Tamils and establishing an inclusive democracy can Sri Lanka conduct a thorough accounting of its past, in peace.
10 End of street for 6,000 India sub-brokers (The Financial Express) A lacklustre equity market, characterised by dwindling volumes, has seen a record 6,000 sub-brokers shut shop this year. This is also the first time that the number of sub-brokers has actually shrunk in any financial year. According to data available with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), the total number of sub-brokers in the cash segment has fallen from 83,808 as on March 31, 2011, to 78,045 by the end of January 2012. In other words, 5,763 sub-brokers have moved out of the business in just 10 months.
The sub-broking business has been under pressure ever since the primary and secondary market went through the doldrums in 2011. Prior to that, the number of sub-brokers went up significantly every fiscal. In FY11, the number of sub-brokers rose by nearly 8,500 or over 11%. Sub-brokers who have shut shop may have moved completely out of the capital market as there has been no corresponding rise in the number of brokers in the cash or derivatives segments.
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