Window on India
September 27, 2006

News Bullets

• India the Optimist
  There are positive signs that a confident India is increasingly becoming a coveted investment destination following its steady and consistent growth curve. Indeed, India has topped the world for the third time in 2004-2005 in the ACNielsen Global Consumer Confidence Index with a score of 131. This is when the Asia-Pacific index score dropped to 94 from 101 of the previous year and the global score remained unmoved at 98. The survey says 56 per cent of Indians think this is a good time to buy things that they always wanted. Indians are feeling extremely bullish and the country's booming economy shows no signs of slowing down, says the agency.
• Professor Lalu Prasad Yadav
  A corrupt politician, an uncouth village ignoramus, a sly opportunist and an uncivilized demagogue – that was the image of Lalu Prasad Yadav, the former chief minister of the state of Bihar in India, much reviled by the media, the metropolitan social chatteratti, the sophisticated culture vultures and the intellectuals elites. And so had the urban middle class bunked Lalu as a clever joker always flaunting his rural background. Not a day passed without the national media making coarse jokes at his expense; the electronic media always by hook or crook brought with him a chewing buffalo in the frames on the screen as if to underline his think-skinned stupidity.
  
  Two and half years as the Union Minister of Railways and there is a dramatic change in the image of Lalu among the intellectuals and the national media, many of them eating crow now. Within this short span, Lalu has made the Indian behemoth of the railways, a desperate loss-making monster of a public undertaking, which had been perpetually mounting its losses, to a profit making organization. Its internal revenue generation, which in 2000-01 before Lalu took over was Rs. 2,350 crore, has shot up to Rs. 13,615 crore in 2005-2006. Not only the revenue and the profits, but the overall performance of the railways, the quality of service has dramatically increased. Who made this magic? The consensus, it seems, is Lalu's astute handling of the department, his innovative management genius and, surprisingly, his stubborn refusal to allow politics to influence decisions and functioning. No wonder, India's choicest management institutes, the world famous IIMs are falling over each other to learn at his feet. The professors, students and guest professionals at the Ahmedbad Institute, listened to Lalu's presentation the other day with rapturous attention for three hours. And now, Lalu is headed to Harvard to share his wisdom with students there.
• Gandhi in Bollywood
  Once in a while Mumbai's film industry, derisively called Bollywood, produces a film which makes India's intellectual world sit up and take notice of it. Lage raho Munnabhai is one such worthy production that has not only set the cinema box offices on fire but also has stirred the academic and sociological world into wondering whether this is how social and moral messages ought to be packaged to make them easily acceptable to the younger generation. Lage Raho is a hilarious film of a bumbling simpleton who is also an underworld don to boot who takes to Gandhi and simply revolutionizes the life around. Gandhi appears before him as a hallucination whenever he has simple moral problems of right and wrong and talks to him in that typical Mumbai street language of the hero.
  
  Ever since the film has hit the screens, there has been a reawakening of an active interest in the life of the Mahatma and the principles and non-violent practices he espoused. particularly among the youths. Bookstores across the country are selling fast whatever literature they have on the practitioner of satyagraha. Management schools are evincing keen interest in the film to study the Mahatma's simple methods of tackling human problems. small and big groups of people, newly organised, are resorting to peaceful methods of confronting authorities and even the police training institutes are studying Gandhi's books to teach the forces the techniques of handling mob violence. A plethora of serious articles written by well-known academicians, sociologists, political scientists and management gurus, are being published every day in national and local newspapers extolling the virtues of the block-buster film attributing layers of profound philosophical meanings to the dialogues between the don Munnabhai and his sidekick circuit. People only wonder how lasting is the impact of the film and how enduring is the interest the young generation is evincing in him.

India Travel We are providing a complete Travel to India Guide, India Tourism Guide, India Tour guide. Hotel in delhi We are travel agents in India providing bookings for New Delhi Hotels, Delhi India Hotels, Delhi Hotels.

Ads by t2india.com

Opinion

SEZs under a cloud - By Arun Sadhu

This is democracy. You cannot bulldoze your decisions at your will. Even if the intention is benign and the objective is growth, development and general welfare. And of course, there are many layers, legal and constitutional hurdles before you make a decision. And further, there are many more processes through which the plan passes before you see the fruits on ground. The fruit may not be as luscious, healthy, wholesome and nutritious as you had first visualised.. Nevertheless, there is some gain. It serves the purpose.

After all, democracy means people's government. The man/woman on the street is the real king, the ruler. Of course, she, the woman on the street, vests her power in the elected representative. As a result, sometimes during the intervening five years, she is completely sapped of that decisive power which makes and destroys governments. Well, but that is the way how a democracy works. You cannot have a Greek-style democracy of a city state where every citizen could vote in a country of continental size with more than a billion inhabitants.

But here, in the modern democracy, every person above the age of 18 years can vote – the magical universal franchise – unlike the Greek democracy where women and slaves were bereft of any power. And that is how on some crucial occasions, the PEOPLE are all powerful and do exercise their right to demolish a government which seemed omnipotent till yesterday. In between these occasions – the elections – they feel powerless. Even so, sometimes the ruling politicians, the bureaucrats, the ministers, the usurpers of the people's power, are forced to climb down their perches and listen to their masters, the people, show respect to them and take cognizance of their sentiments –even if to protect their own turf.

Thus the Special Economic Zones (SEZ) adopted in India on the Chinese model seem to have come under a cloud and their further proliferation may temporarily go into a cold storage till the vital issues that bear on them are resolved. Not because the people are opposed to them. But because at some places, they are being used as real estate opportunities for sharks at the cost of the peasants who are displaced. When the land is acquired for the SEZ, the compensation paid to the poor peasant holder is sometimes less than one-hundredth of what the authorities actually realise from the final buyer. What is more, the profit thus realised may not go into the State coffers; a large part of it may be gobbled up by the agencies which actually process the transactions on behalf of the government. The original land-holders are left high and dry, without their land, without adequate means of sustenance and without a job. And to rub salt on their wounds, the SEZs, the happiest tax havens that ever existed in India, harbour unscrupulous elements that twist the rules or take advantage of loopholes to make fortune on the sly by cheating the government and the people.

The outcry of the bereaved peasants struck by this blatant injustice has finally reached the highest echelons in Delhi, the seat of the central government. The government is now tightening the norms, evolving stringent procedures to monitor the functioning of the developers and formulating a general policy oof acquiring land for the SEZ so that the displaced original holders are given their due share and are properly rehabilitated. The government is also finalising guidelines for developing social infrastructure for the SEZs including hospitals, schools and houses for the locals.

Incidentally, the Board of Approvals for SEZs has recently given a final sanction to 14 new proposals which takes the tally of approved SEZ proposals in the country to 164. The work is on at a number of SEZ's but the very concept of the special zones has come under suspicion by the people and also by a group of investors as also a few economists. There are many reasons for this: first the lack of fair play and want of justice to the people whose land is requisitioned, second, lack of transparency in the processes followed, third, a sense that the scheme has given a free hand to the land-grabbers and unscrupulous dealers and third, intervention of the government agencies at various stages which some free-marketers see as harking back to the licence-permit raj of the yore.

Perhaps, the course-correction which the government is now attempting would set the matters right and, above all, render justice to the displaced. Otherwise, on the next crucial occasion, which may not be very far, the rulers might experience the strength of the people's real power.

Submit to Digg