1 On a grain mountain, India goes hungry (The New
York Times) In the north Indian
village, Ranwan, workers recently dismantled stacks of burned and mildewed rice
while flies swarmed nearby over spoiled wheat. Local residents said the rice
crop had been sitting along the side of a highway for several years and was now
being sent to a distillery to be turned into liquor. Just 180 miles to the south, in a slum on the outskirts of
New Delhi, Leela Devi struggled to feed her family of four on meager portions
of flatbread and potatoes, which she said were all she could afford on her
disability pension and the irregular wages of her day-laborer husband. Her
family is among the estimated 250 million Indians who do not get enough to eat.
Such is the paradox of plenty in India’s
food system. Spurred by agricultural innovation and generous farm subsidies,
India now grows so much food that it has a bigger grain stockpile than any
country except China, and it exports some of it to countries like Saudi Arabia
and Australia. Yet one-fifth of its people are malnourished because of
pervasive corruption, mismanagement and waste in the programs that are supposed
to distribute food to the poor.
After years of neglect, the nation’s
failed food policies have now become a subject of intense debate in New Delhi,
with lawmakers, advocates for the poor, economists and the news media
increasingly calling for an overhaul. The populist national government is
considering legislation that would pour billions of additional dollars into the
system and double the number of people served to two-thirds of the population.
The proposed law would also allow the poor to buy more rice and wheat at lower
prices. But critics say that without fundamental system reforms, the extra
money will only deepen the nation’s budget deficit and further enrich the
officials who routinely steal food from various levels of the distribution
chain.
2 German pain begins as exports slump (The Guardian)
Pressure is building on Angela Merkel to act with
signs this morning that the eurozone crisis is beginning to impact her
electorate. German imports and exports fell sharply in April, according to data
published this morning. Europe's largest economy is beginning to feel the pinch, with
seasonally adjusted imports dropping 4.8%, their worst decline in two years.
The numbers will have surprised German economists, who mostly expected the
number to remain flat, having falled 0.9% in March. The news will add fuel to
the lively debate on the current edition of the Economist, whose front cover
calls on Merkel to restart the engines of a u-boat named the World Economy.
3
French economic decline predicted (BBC) The Bank of France has cut its forecast for the
French economy. It now expects the economy to contract by 0.1% between April and
June this year, having predicted that there would be zero growth less than a
month ago. There was zero growth in the French economy in the first three
months of the year, following growth of just 0.1% in the previous quarter. The
cut is the latest sign of the lack of growth in the eurozone, which is
struggling with the debt crisis. Earlier this week, the latest set of official
figures confirmed the eurozone economy achieved zero growth in the first three
months of 2012.
4 Getting worked up about working out (Khaleej
Times) Constantly
thinking about the next workout? Upset about missing an exercise class? Fitness
experts say more is not always better and overworking a workout can sap
strength and invite injury. “We have fit people and deconditioned people who overdo it,”
said Geralyn Coopersmith, national director of the US-based Equinox Fitness
Training Institute. Exercise is like a medicine. If you don’t have enough, you
get no benefits; if you have too much, you have problems.
Shin splints, heel spurs and
tendonitis are among the common overuse injuries that Coopersmith, who oversees
the training of personal trainers for Equinox fitness centers, sees. “Some days
should be intense, some days not so intense,” she said. “Exercise is a stressor.
If it’s too much, the body can break down.” Extreme fatigue, irritability,
moodiness, an elevated resting heart rate, fever, and an inability to work at
your earlier levels are among the signs that you’ve overdone it, she said.
5 Today’s India recalls Queen Victoria’s reign (Manu
Joseph in Khaleej Times) As
Britain celebrates six decades of Elizabeth II as monarch, it is the reign of
another queen that contemporary India resembles. It may be nearly impossible to accept that Victorian
Britain, with its frock coats and parasols, had anything in common with
present-day India, where “ladies” and “gentlemen” are primarily toilet signs.
But, if the charades of appearances and manners are stripped away, and if only
economic tumult and questions of conscience are considered, then mid-19th-century
Britain had much in common with India today.
In the England of that time, there
were sharp increases in wealth, but the Industrial Revolution had also heaped a
vast number of urban poor in plain sight. The accepted wisdom then was that
poverty was the unavoidable curse of an unlucky majority. But that notion was
slowly demolished by some brilliant men and women who, in their efforts to
devise a cure, were building the rudiments of modern economics. A newly
enriched society was beginning to accept that abject poverty in its midst was a
morally indefensible paradox.
Sylvia Nasar, in her recent book “Grand
Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius,” describes the observations of the
24-year-old mathematician Alfred Marshall on an unremarkable day in 1867, many
years before he became one of the most influential economists of his time. In
Manchester, she writes, Marshall found “the smoky brown sky, muddy brown
streets, and long piles of warehouses, cavernous mills and insalubrious
tenements – all within a few hundred yards of glittering shops, gracious parks
and grand hotels. ... In the narrow back streets he encountered sallow
undersized men and stunted, pale factory girls. ...” This could be, without any
changes, a scene in any major Indian city today.
There is, of course, a
crucial difference between modern India and Victorian Britain, even though
India asks and Britain once asked the same questions. In the second half of the
19th century, Britain
was a very wealthy nation. India is still poor. Britain, it would appear, has
found most of the answers it sought. India is still searching. What unites them
is, as Nasar writes of Alfred Marshall’s preoccupation, the quest to solve “the
central paradox of modern society: poverty amid plenty.”
6 Why India PM’s infra hopes may fail (The Wall
Street Journal) Indian Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh’s pep talk to government departments is unlikely to get
the infrastructure sector out of the rut. Mr Singsh wants the government to partner with private companies who will
be bringing a lion’s share of the funds to set up new ports, airports, power
plants, roads and railway lines. He hopes that, in turn, this would boost
employment and spur demand, helping the economy expand faster. While the
government listed several major infrastructure projects it plans to roll out in
the year through March 2013, lenders seem wary of funding them.
Investors are concerned with problems
ranging from difficulties in buying land and securing environmental clearances
to the scant supply of energy.The government needs to encourage private
investment in infrastructure because – with fiscal deficit projected to be 5.1%
of gross domestic product in 2012-13 – it does not have enough money to
fund new power plants, ports, roads and airports on its own. There’s also the
falling rupee, which has made oil imports a lot more expensive for all.
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