India in free fall; ILO has a role amidst global crisis; Blame game after Facebook flop show; Crisis of European democracy; Shining India, swaggering India

1 India in free fall (Eswar Prasad in The Wall Street Journal) The falling Indian rupee, which Monday closed at an all-time low relative to the dollar, is a perfect metaphor for the free fall India's economy seems to be in. Growth has slowed to below 7%, and industrial growth has virtually ground to a halt. High oil prices widened the current account deficit, and now finicky global investors are pulling capital out.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his government face a stark choice that they can no longer avoid. They can try to get the central bank to intervene in foreign exchange markets to ride out the storm. Or they can heed the real message of the rupee's fall: India's policy making has lost its way. One problem is New Delhi's undisciplined fiscal policy, which has hurt confidence in both India's ability to weather adverse shocks and its long-term prospects. A high level of public debt—nearly 70% of GDP—and a persistently high budget deficit have pumped up overall demand in the economy. This hamstrings monetary policy, which has to keep tightening, and also contributes to the large current account gap. This leaves the economy vulnerable to shocks such as oil price increases and capital flow reversals.

New Delhi seems to lack the spine to push through reforms that would have broad benefits. Mr. Singh has done too much backtracking, such as his overnight retreat last year on liberalizing foreign investment in retail. Of course, to prolong his political life, Mr. Singh could switch to survival mode for the rest of his term, clinging to power while devoting his energy to fending off accusations of graft and mismanagement. This would be a sad legacy for a man who put the country on a high-growth trajectory through reforms he instituted 20 years ago.

2 India land buying may get tougher for companies (The Wall Street Journal) Acquiring land in India isn’t easy to begin with, especially if you are planning to build factories, power plants, special economic zones or highways. It may get harder: If a parliamentary panel has it way, buying land for industrial and infrastructure may become close to impossible.

Industry is alarmed by the panel’s suggestion that the government should no longer help the private sector buy land.  Instead, they recommend the government should intervene in negotiations with landowners – typically farmers or people classified as tribals – only when projects that serve the public interest are involved. By this they mean things like schools, hospitals, irrigation systems and defense projects.

Adi Godrej, the head of the Confederation of Indian Industry, said that if the panel’s recommendations get approved, the industry would be left to “fend for itself.” Real estate lobby group Credai said that if the government decided to stay clear of private land acquisitions, at least it should make it easier for companies to do so on their own by simplifying the procedures necessary to compensate landowners. Land acquisition hurdles have held back several big-ticket projects. South Korea’s Posco, for instance, has been trying to resolve the deadlock over its $12-billion steel project in the eastern state of Orissa for the past six years, but to no avail.

3 How ILO could play a role in the global crisis (The Guardian) The Troika – the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission, and the IMF – is dragging Europe into its second recession in three years. The ECB by itself has the ability to end this crisis, by guaranteeing low interest rates on the sovereign bonds of countries such as Spain and Italy. Member governments would then be able to restore normal economic growth and employment. But the ECB refuses to do this – partly because the Troika is using the crisis as an opportunity to force changes.

There is one international institution that, because its governance structure includes labor unions, is sometimes able to take a more progressive stance on these vital issues. That is the International Labor Organization (ILO), affiliated with the United Nations. The ILO is thus differentiated from such organizations as the IMF, the World Bank, or the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) – all of which have an enormous influence which tends to reinforce the status quo, or worse.

The ILO estimates that the world has lost 50m jobs since the world economic crisis and Great Recession began – and the Troika is adding to the toll. On 28 May, the ILO will choose a new director general. There is one candidate who is most likely to try to harness the ILO's potential to challenge the devastating economic policies that have caused so much unnecessary unemployment and suffering in the past four years. That is Jomo Kwame Sundaram of Malaysia, the only Asian candidate. He has shown clear understanding not only of the causes of the current economic crisis, but also of the failure of the relevant government and international institutions to bring us out of it. He would also expose the fallacies of the labor market liberalization policies currently being touted as the solution.

4 Winners and losers in Facebook’s IPO hype (The Guardian) It is too soon to tell whether Facebook shares will end up being a good buy or a turkey, but the reaction to the initial public offering (IPO) since the first day of trading should serve as a serious warning. Of course, Facebook is unlikely to go out of business, but it is certainly possible that its business model is not sufficiently robust to justify a position among corporate America's elite in market capitalization. A year or two down the road, it may well turn out that its share price ends up at half or less of its IPO price (at time of writing, it is already off 13%).

In this case, there will have been an enormous transfer of wealth from the purchasers of Facebook stock to those able to cash out following the IPO. This will make many of those on the inside of the company fantastically wealthy. However, much of their wealth would not result from making a good product that society valued; rather, it came from being part of a successfully hyped company.

Even if Facebook ends up losing much of its value in the years ahead, it is virtually certain that Mark Zuckerberg and other inside players will remain incredibly wealthy individuals. After all, Steve Case is still one of the country's richest people even though his former company, AOL could be purchased for pocket change today. The wealth that these people command was not created out of thin air. It came from suckers who bought the hype.

5 Shutting out masses in IPO, as in Facebook case (San Francisco Chronicle) The Facebook flop is just the latest evidence of a growing and unsustainable imbalance across the tech investment spectrum. On Monday, Facebook's shares dropped through the initial public offering price of $38, falling nearly 11% to close at $34.03. That follows a string of tech firms that have seen their stock dip below the offering price in recent months, including Groupon, Zynga and Angie's List. Others like Yelp and Zillow are above their offering price, but below where the stock started trading on the first day.

It means that venture capitalists and angel investors are consistently winning big, leaving little money on the table as they liquidate their holdings. But the pension funds and other institutional investors that buy up the shares at the offering price - and the individual investors who can only snag shares once trading starts - are getting hosed. "Facebook left nothing for the common investor," Forbes Publisher Rich Karlgaard wrote. "The insider pig pile of (private equity) firms and celebrity Silicon Valley angels took it all. This is a rather new, post-Sarbanes-Oxley fact, and it should make Americans very, very angry."

6 Goldman Sachs gains $235m in Facebook IPO (San Francisco Chronicle) $235 million is how much Goldman Sachs earned selling its stake in Facebook's IPO. The Wall Street bank doubled its money on a bet it made on the social-network giant in 2010. Goldman, which has funded rising technology companies including Facebook, LinkedIn and Dropbox, is ramping up investments in Web startups, leading a $52 million round of funding in AnchorFree, a Mountain View maker of Internet-surfing software.

7 Blame game after Facebook flop show (The New York Times) Wall Street is playing the Facebook blame game. As shares of the social network tumbled in their second day of trading, bankers, investors and analysts wondered what had gone wrong with the initial public offering of Facebook, the most highly anticipated technology debut in years. Some fingers are pointing at Morgan Stanley, the lead banker on the IPO, while others criticize Nasdaq and even Facebook itself. In the aftermath, critics contend that Facebook’s offering price was too high and too many shares were sold to the public, hurting the stock’s performance out of the gate.

For Morgan Stanley, landing the Facebook public offering was one of the biggest investment banking coups in almost a decade, and a successful debut would most likely have cemented its position as the dominant force in technology I.P.O.s. But Morgan Stanley now faces questions about its role in the events surrounding Facebook. Rivals involved in the Facebook underwriting process say that Morgan Stanley exerted an enormous amount of control over important aspects of the process, including dominating meetings with institutional shareholders.

8 Zuckerburg’s post-marriage property status (The New York Times) The new Mrs Mark Zuckerberg might not have to worry much about money, but that doesn't mean she is automatically a billionaire. The timing of Mark Zuckerberg's marriage to his college sweetheart, Priscilla Chan, on Saturday, just a day after he took his company public, was certainly curious. Was he looking to clarify his net worth, which, with roughly 503 million shares, now stands at about $17 billion? And if true, many observers are speculating, did that have to do with the terms of a prenuptial agreement? The Zuckerbergs are not saying.

But what is clear, say matrimonial law experts, is that whatever Zuckerberg earned before the marriage is still solely his property afterwards. California is one of fewer than a dozen states that follow community property laws, which specifically outline how property is divided between two spouses (or, in some cases, registered domestic partners). The rest of the states generally follow equitable division rules, where the court tries to divide assets fairly at divorce. Generally, the rule for community property states that anything that was one spouse's property before marriage is considered separate.

9 Crisis of European democracy (Amartya Sen in The New York Times) If proof were needed of the maxim that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the economic crisis in Europe provides it. The worthy but narrow intentions of the European Union’s policy makers have been inadequate for a sound European economy and have produced instead a world of misery, chaos and confusion.

There are two reasons for this. First, intentions can be respectable without being clearheaded, and the foundations of the current austerity policy, combined with the rigidities of Europe’s monetary union (in the absence of fiscal union), have hardly been a model of cogency and sagacity. Second, an intention that is fine on its own can conflict with a more urgent priority — in this case, the preservation of a democratic Europe that is concerned about societal well-being. These are values for which Europe has fought, over many decades.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Europe’s current malaise is the replacement of democratic commitments by financial dictates. Europe cannot revive itself without addressing two areas of political legitimacy. First, Europe cannot hand itself over to the unilateral views of experts without public reasoning and informed consent of its citizens. Second, both democracy and the chance of creating good policy are undermined when ineffective and blatantly unjust policies are dictated by leaders.

10 Barcoding everyone at birth (BBC)  Science fiction writer Elizabeth Moon argues that everyone should be given a barcode at birth. “If I were empress of the Universe I would insist on every individual having a unique ID permanently attached - a barcode if you will; an implanted chip to provide an easy, fast inexpensive way to identify individuals. It would be imprinted on everyone at birth. Point the scanner at someone and there it is.

“Having such a unique barcode would have many advantages. In war soldiers could easily differentiate legitimate targets in a population from non combatants. Anonymity would be impossible as would mistaken identity making it easier to place responsibility accurately, not only in war but also in non-combat situations far from the war.”

11 Zuma painting, The Spear, goes into hiding (Johannesburg Times) As threats against the Goodman Gallery increased, the controversial painting of President Jacob Zuma with his genitals exposed was relocated to an unknown safe location. The Spear, by Cape Town artist Brett Murray, was moved after two men defaced it with red and black paint. The owner of the Goodman Gallery, Liza Essers, said: "The extent of the rage has astonished me and upset me very much. I furthermore never imagined that this debate would transform into harmful physical action.'' The Young Communist League, which is planning a march to the gallery tomorrow, said the men who defaced the painting should be given awards for their bravery. Cosatu, which has been vocal in the controversy, said it sympathised with the men and understood their anger.

12 World’s tallest tower opens in Tokyo (Khaleej Times) The world’s tallest tower and Tokyo’s biggest new landmark, the Tokyo Sky Tree, has opened to the public. High-speed elevators take visitors to the observation decks of the 634-meter (2,080-foot) tower. It is recognized by Guinness World Records as the tallest tower, beating out the Canton Tower in China, which is 600 meters (1,968 ½ feet). The world’s tallest structure is Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, which stands 828 meters (2,717 feet). That’s in a different category because it’s a skyscraper, not a tower. The Sky Tree will serve as a broadcast tower for television and radio, along with being a tourist attraction.

13 India down in the dumps (Khaleej Times) While non resident Indians who earn money abroad may be delighted with the spike in the rupee values they are getting for remittances the dream run for India’s bouncing economy seems to have hit a rut. The policymakers who were only recently touting the market of the future are now redoing their sums with something akin to despair.

Much of the reason for the slip to a dubious distinction of being the steepest drop of any Asian economy is the spectre of protectionism that has again enveloped India’s progress. For years this element in the Indian industrial base corroded progress and the inward thinking, closed-door attitude kept the world away. Just as things had begun to swing for the 1.2 billion strong market, and the world was seeing India as a gateway they slammed the doors shut again. Indeed, the question to be asked now is if India has missed the international bus and will there be another one coming its way?

14 Remembering the founder of Jacobabad (Dawn) The year 2012 marks the 200^th birth anniversary of the founder of the city of Jacobabad, General Johan Jacob, but hardly does anyone remember this great pioneer of the city and the district. Even the 1.24 million people residing in the district have completely forgotten the man who single-handedly turned a desert into thousands of acres of arable land in just twenty years. One can appreciate the scale of progress and prosperity his works brought to the region by just comparing it with the contiguous areas in today’s Baluchistan which were not under his administrative jurisdiction.

Being a native of the city, it is a moral duty to pay homage to this great man whose rule spanning over just about two decades (1838-1858) bears fruit for the local populace to this day. Apart from being a resolute soldier, then a chivalrous commander, and an unwavering commandant of Sind Irregular Horse, he was an able administrator, an innovative inventor, a creative architect, a meticulous engineer, a master city planner as well. Besides his military expertise and achievements, his civilian services for the area are remarkable so much so that after nearly 200 years of his reign, still there are tangible evidences of his works for the district.

His single most important feat was the excavation of Begaree Canal, originating from Guddu barrage on river Indus and going round the district irrigating thousands of acres of land previously uncultivated. He resolved the problem of unavailability of potable water for the residents by excavating a tank that contained water brought from Indus through a canal. Death knocked at his door way too early when he fell to brain fever and turned his toes up peacefully on 5th December 1858, he was just 46, but he had accomplished much more than his age would suggest.

15 Shining India, swaggering India (Sidharth Bhatia in The Times of India) India has not handled its success well. Instead of the greater responsibility that should come with greater power and wealth, we have chosen to swagger. We cannot stand anyone making fun of our foibles or our accent. We are ready to use our diplomatic resources if some advertisement in a far away country spoofs our ways. The world is laughing at our pompousness and this makes us more furious.

The sorriest part of this is that our rage is turned against those who cannot defend themselves. And those at the bottom of the social pyramid, who suffer the most inequity and therefore have some justification to be angry, are expected to meekly surrender. What will happen if one day they start showing their rage?