Tag Archive for ‘Economy’ at Asian Window

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Tag Archive for 'Economy'

Survey of Pakistan’s young predicts ‘disaster’ if their needs aren’t addressed

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on November 22, 2009

in Pakistan and Society

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From the New York Times:

Pakistan will face a “demographic disaster” if it does not address the needs of its young generation, the largest in the country’s history, whose views reflect a deep disillusionment with government and democracy, according to a report released in Lahore on Saturday.

The report, commissioned by the British Council and conducted by the Nielsen research company, drew a picture of a deeply frustrated young generation that feels abandoned by its government and despondent about its future.

An overwhelming majority of young Pakistanis say their country is headed in the wrong direction, the report said, and only 1 in 10 has confidence in the government. Most see themselves as Muslim first and Pakistani second, and they are now entering a work force in which the lion’s share cannot find jobs, a potentially volatile situation if the government cannot address its concerns. More:

Click here to read the full survey.

Frustrated by endless war, young Afghans are abandoning their country

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on July 5, 2009

in Afghanistan and Terrorism

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From the New York Times:

Kabul – Through two decades of war, Abdul Ahad never contemplated leaving Afghanistan. But as his country started to deteriorate rapidly in 2007, so did his life. He was laid off from his full-time driving job and forced to take the only work he could find: a once-a-week driving gig through Taliban territory.

In the past eight months, a suicide bomb and a firefight nearly took his life. Now, Mr. Ahad, 26, has had enough. He has begun scouting potential smugglers to take him to Europe, he said, looking to join the surge of young Afghans who are abandoning their country, frustrated by endless war, a lack of prospects and the slow pace of change.

While foreign diplomats hold out hope that the August presidential elections and President Obama’s new troop deployments could change things here, Afghans are voting with their feet. More:

Nepal bans airline staff pockets to fight bribes

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on July 1, 2009

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From BBC:

Staff at Nepal’s main international airport are to be issued with trousers without pockets, in an attempt to wipe out rampant bribe-taking.

The country’s anti-corruption body said there had been growing complaints about staff at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan airport.

A spokesman said trousers without pockets would help the authorities “curb the irregularities”.

The move comes after the prime minister of Nepal said corruption was damaging the airport’s reputation, AFP reported. More

A head start for India’s next premier

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on May 14, 2009

in Indian elections 2009

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Aravind Adiga in Financial Times:

Visitors to India are dazzled by the chaos and unpredictability of life here, but those who observe its politics are bewildered by the opposite. Crises are visible from a distance and grow to size in full public view, yet still seem to catch the government by absolute surprise. We have to wait until May 16 – or perhaps even longer – to know whether India’s next prime minister will be the incumbent, Manmohan Singh, or his Hindu nationalist rival, L.K. Advani, or someone from a smaller party. But this much is already clear: the new prime minister will almost certainly have to deal with four emergencies in the course of his term.

Emergency One: Terrorism is a part of daily life in India now, but at some point during the new prime minister’s term there will be a spectacular strike – on a plane, temple, parliament or nuclear installation. When the strike takes place, it will be found that the local police did not have enough guns, walkie-talkies, training or manpower to fight back quickly. Co-ordination between local security agencies and elite commando forces in Delhi will prove to be poor. When the terrorists are overpowered, they will probably say that they received training and assistance from jihadists in Pakistan; they may even be Pakistani nationals. More:

The Maldives’ struggle to stay afloat

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on May 13, 2009

in The Maldives

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From TIME Asia:

The Maldives’ coffers, though, are perilously low. In part that is a consequence of the global downturn, which has hit international tourism hard. The crunch was exacerbated by profligate spending in the final years of the Gayoom regime, as it sought to cement votes with new infrastructure projects. In February, Nasheed’s government moved to auction off some of the former ruler’s more extravagant state possessions, including a personal yacht, a private pleasure island and a gold-plated toilet.

Gayoom’s supporters point to the influx of foreign cash that flooded into the country after he assumed power. His government opened dozens of the archipelago’s islands to international tourism, which now directly contributes to 30% of the Maldives’ GDP. In a country short on land, construction became a lucrative business: the cramped capital Malé, where more than a third of the population lives, is a maze of concrete. Rents sometimes match those of world cities such as Hong Kong or New York City, and a bleary-eyed community of foreign laborers hammers away at building sites daily. That’s quite a change. Not long ago, Malé was a sleepy fishing island with sand-packed streets and pens for livestock, only reachable after a perilous weeklong journey by ship from Colombo. Now, most people there sport flashy cell phones; at night, a few Porsches and Maseratis rev their engines impotently around the 500-acre (2 sq km) capital’s congested roads. More:

Pessimism growing in Pakistan

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on December 20, 2008

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Pakistanis are becoming increasingly pessimistic about prospects for their country and for themselves. According to an opinion poll conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI), a US-based group that promotes democracy, about 88 per cent Pakistanis feel their country is headed in the wrong direction, 59 per cent say the next year will be worse than the current year and 67 per cent believe democracy has made no difference to their wellbeing.

Read the Dawn report here, and click here for the the full IRI survey:

Pakistan turns to ‘friends’ in its hour of need

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on November 19, 2008

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Jeremy Page from Islamabad in the Times:

Welcome to Pakistan’s “Street of Dreams” – your chance to buy into a future free of suicide bombers, power cuts, crumbling infrastructure and bad shopping.

So goes the sales pitch for Canyon Views, a 1,000-acre complex of 5,000 luxury homes in Tuscan, Portuguese and Moorish styles being built on the outskirts of the Pakistani capital. “It’s a dream come true,” said a sales executive on a recent tour. “This is the new Islamabad.”

When a Dubai-based developer invested $2.4 billion (£1.6 billion) in this and two similar projects in Pakistan in 2006, the dream seemed almost real. The economy was booming, the consumer class spending, the stock market outperforming the world. The first 250 villas – costing as much as $400,000 each – sold in a flash.

How times have changed.

An old army in a new war

The Pakistani army is engaged in a gritty battle with Afghan militants in a border area where it has never had authority. Jason Burke reports from Loesam in the Guardian:

Loesam is a long way from anywhere. Once a small town in north-west Pakistan, on the Afghanistan frontier, it has been razed to the ground. The bazaar is a pile of rubble, homes scraped down to their concrete foundations. The only building still upright is the mosque that stands in the corner of what once was the local petrol station. The population has fled.

A few hundred metres out of Loesam, the 25th Punjab regiment of the Pakistani army is digging in. Those few hundred metres were seized the day before in a short, sharp engagement with militants entrenched in mud-walled compounds, stands of slim ash, birch trees and dry valleys with their yellow dust walls on their outskirts.

Slaves who build modern monuments

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on October 9, 2008

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It is already home to the world’s glitziest buildings, man-made islands and mega-malls – now Dubai plans to build the tallest tower. But behind the dizzying construction boom is an army of migrant labourers from South Asia and elsewhere lured into a life of squalor and exploitation. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports in The Guardian:

Ghaith Abdul Ahad

Workers sleep on the street in Dubai. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul Ahad

I have left Dubai’s spiralling towers, man-made islands and mega-malls behind and driven through the desert to the outskirts of the neighbouring city of Abu Dhabi. Turn right before the Zaha Hadid bridge, and a few hundred metres takes you to the heart of Mousafah, a ghetto-like neighbourhood of camps hidden away from the eyes of tourists. It is just one of many areas around the Gulf set aside for an army of labourers building the icons of architecture that are mushrooming all over the region.

Behind the showers, in a yard paved with metal sheets, a line of men stands silently in front of grease-blackened pans, preparing their dinner. Sweat rolls down their heads and necks, their soaked shirts stuck to their backs. A heavy smell of spices and body odour fills the air.

Next to a heap of rubbish, a man holds a plate containing his meal: a few chillies, an onion and three tomatoes, to be fried with spices and eaten with a piece of bread.

Imran Khan’s bakeries fight Pakistan food crisis

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on September 28, 2008

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Bronwyn Curran from Lahore in The National:

Matthew Tabaccos for The National

A baker makes roti at a sasta tandoor run by Imran Khan. Photo: Matthew Tabaccos for The National

Imran Khan, Pakistan’s revered cricket hero who has transformed himself into the country’s angriest politician, forfeited a place in parliament when he boycotted February elections. Now he is doing what the crisis-burdened government is failing to: feeding the poor.

In depressed urban neighbourhoods of the Punjab, Pakistan’s most populated province, Mr Khan’s party, Tehreek-e-Insaf, has begun operating sasta tandoors (cheap tandoor bakeries), selling fresh roti and nan from traditional tandoor ovens for less than half the market rates.

15 people the next US President should listen to

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on September 24, 2008

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Wired magazine has a “Smart List of 15 Wired people” it says the next president should listen to. These 15 are “the best minds” on climate change, the military, space exploration, democracy, global health, terrorism, China and India. They have “big ideas about how to fix the things that need fixing.” The list includes:

Jagdish Bhagwati: As the world’s preeminent globalization buff, Jagdish Bhagwati doesn’t toe standard party lines. The Columbia University economist, 74, who has advised everyone from the Indian government to the World Trade Organization, is a rare nonpartisan in a field dominated by ideologues. A registered Democrat who is willing to face down the anti-free-trade wing of his own party, Bhagwati is also comfortable arguing against what he sees as the compassion-free laissez-faire attitude exhibited by many of his fellow globalization advocates.

Parag Khanna: In his book The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order, Khanna, 31, describes a planet dominated by a trio of superpowers: the US, China, and Europe. In this tripolar era, America’s fate depends on tough national choices, not lame historical analogies. If the US wises up – by tightening trade and energy ties to the rest of the hemisphere, pursuing economic innovation at home, and establishing a “diplomatic-industrial complex” – it can grow stronger even as the globe becomes less red, white, and blue.

Ram Shriram: In the face of terrorism, global warming, and economic stagnation, spectrum policy may not seem like a top presidential priority. But it ought to be. Ram Shriram, a venture capitalist who helped fund Google a decade ago, says wireless carriers are hamstringing the mobile industry. He advocates opening the airwaves – and even mounted an (unsuccessful) bid on a chunk of radio spectrum in January. What’s at stake? “The greatest wave of innovation since the PC-platform era.”

India’s iconic electric car gets volt of energy

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on September 18, 2008

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Rina Chandran / Reuters:

Long before “green” cars became trendy in other parts of the world, a boxy electric two-seater began rolling out of a small factory in the Indian city of Bangalore, which was then emerging as a software services hub.

Today, scores of Reva electric cars can be seen tootling down Bangalore’s crowded streets, their bright colours and minimalist design drawing curious looks, even smiles, from commuters.

“It is simply beautiful,” said T. Shivaram, a small business owner who bought a yellow-and-black Reva last year to cut his fuel bill.”It gives me driving pleasure and everyone stares at it and wants to know more about it.”

The Reva was among the world’s first electric vehicles sold commercially. It did not take off initially quite as its maker had hoped but it has blazed a trail for other electric cars — such as General Motors’ new Chevrolet Volt — which are coming into their own in an age of high oil prices.

Reva Electric Car Co was set up in 1994 by India’s Maini Group and AEV of the United States. The company was the first to successfully commercialise electric vehicles, according to consultancy Frost & Sullivan.

Pakistan’s bleakest moment

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on September 18, 2008

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On BBC, Ahmed Rashid takes a look at how Pakistan is facing its bleakest moment, months after getting a new democratic government.

Just when Pakistanis thought they had a new democracy, ushering in a new civilian government, a new president and the end of eight years of military rule, they are faced with the bleakest moment in the country’s history.

Proverbially listed as a failing state, this precariously poised country could now be in a downward spiral towards becoming a failed state.

Internationally isolated and condemned by the world community due to its Afghan policy, Pakistan’s tribal territories have become a free for all firing range for US troops even as the domestic threat from the Pakistani Taleban multiplies.

Bollywood’s western duet

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on September 12, 2008

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Joe Leahy in Financial Times:

Germans tuning into music video cable channels this month will discover an exotic new offering.

Tamisha (right), a 28-year-old schoolteacher of Indian descent from Frankfurt, will stage the official release of her first single, “Du siehst mich nicht” (You don’t see me), from an album of songs adapted from the Bollywood film Cheeni Kum (Less Sugar).

This bouncy Hindi pop tune translated into German is aimed at a much wider audience than Germany’s relatively small Indian community.

“In Germany people are saying: ‘You know what? We just want to see something else other than just the big American productions. We are over that,’” says Benjamin Bach, senior vice-president of international sales at Eros International, the London-listed arm of the Bollywood movie house. Eros is promoting Tamisha jointly with Universal Music.

In India, the paradox of ‘choice’ in a globalized culture

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on September 12, 2008

in India and Politics

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Anand Giridharadas in International Herald Tribune:

A worker removing English signage in Mumbai on Aug. 26. (AP photo)

A worker removing English signage in Mumbai on Aug. 26. (AP photo)

Mumbai: A decade ago, the world hurtled toward a calendrical crisis, and India seized an opportunity.

An affliction called the Y2K bug impended. Thousands of Indian techies were marshaled to repair the software glitch. The rest is outsourcing history.

The outsourcing boom craved English speakers. Hole-in-the-wall “academies” from Kerala to Punjab began to sell English classes for a few dollars a week. A colonizer’s language was recast in the minds of many young lower-income Indians as a language of liberation, independence and mobility.

A decade hence, Indians who have achieved that mobility may struggle to understand the newspaper headlines in Mumbai in recent days. They tell of brigades of young men shattering the windows of shops and restaurants whose signs declare their names only in English, not in the regional language Marathi.

Long live democracy until the next dictator

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on August 23, 2008

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What does the future hold for Pakistan? Ayesha Siddiqa, author of Military Inc, spins four different political scenarios which could hold the key to a stable democracy. From Tehelka:

“Ma’am, are you happy with this decision?” was what the makeup woman at the GEO television channel asked me on President Pervez Musharraf’s resignation. The uncertainty in her voice brought home to me the fact that there was no consensus on the future of the country now that the greatest challenge to democracy, as official voices from Islamabad claimed, was gone. She did not even belong to the chattering classes of Islamabad – she was just an ordinary women asking a simple question, answering which in today’s Pakistan is a sobering experience.

Since Musharraf took over in October 1999, he had been claiming that he had turned the country around. In his resignation speech on August 18, he claimed that the economy was in good shape, showing a seven percent GDP growth rate, Pakistan has been declared part of the Next-11 states to show signs of rapid development, and was now taken seriously by international players. His development indicators were the increase in the number of mobile phones, cars and motorcycles. Yet, people were out on the streets distributing sweets and dancing at his departure. Ironically, in 1999 the same people had welcomed the ouster of the Nawaz Sharif regime by Musharraf.

Is something wrong with Pakistanis? Can they not make up their minds about whether they like a military dictatorship or democracy? Are Pakistanis not capable of handling democracy?

After Musharraf, U.S. Struggles to Find New Pakistan Ally Against Taliban

In the New York Times, Jane Perlez analyses the situation in Pakistan:

With Mr. Musharraf out of power, recent visitors to the United States Embassy here say American officials have been at a loss – one used the word “struggling” – to figure out who America should throw its weight behind.

On Friday, the country’s biggest party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, said it was nominating its leader, Asif Ali Zardari, for president, a post he may end up winning in an electoral college vote scheduled for Sept. 6.

That could make Mr. Zardari America’s default ally, though the next president’s full range of powers, and his commitment and ability to fight the Taliban insurgency, as Washington would like, are far from clear.

Why do some countries win more Olympic medals?

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on August 18, 2008

in India and Sport

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A population of over one billion has so far won only one medal at the Beijing Olympics. Why can’t India do better? In a recent paper in the Bombay-published journal Economic and Political Weekly, Anirudh Krishna and Eric Haglund, two academics at Duke University in the United States, say the problem for India is the number of people who can effectively participate in sports”. Nearly 8 million children suffer from malnutrition and more than 250 million live below the poverty line. The authors contend that social mobility is the key to countries’ success at the Olympics. [via The Guardian]

Abhinav Bindra with his Gold medal at Beijing Olympics

Abhinav Bindra with his Gold medal at Beijing Olympics

Compared to its share in the world’s population, India’s share of Olympic medals is abysmally low. In the 2004 Olympic Games, for example, India won only one medal. Turkey, which has less than one-tenth of India’s population, won 10 times as many medals, and Thailand, which has roughly 6 per cent of India’s population, won eight times as many medals.

India’s one-sixth share in the world’s population translated into a 1/929 share in 2004 Olympic medals. While Australia won 2.46 medals per one-million population and Cuba won 2.39 medals per one-million population, India brought up the bottom of this international chart, winning a mere 0.0009 medals per one-million population. Nigeria, next lowest, had 18 times this number, winning 0.015 medals per one-million population.1 Why does the average Indian count for so little? What prevents the translation of India’s huge number of people into a proportionate – or even near-proportionate – number of Olympic medals? The gross domestic product certainly matters, as previous analyses have indicated [Bernard and Busse 2004], but something else also seems to be making a difference, given that Cuba, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Kenya and Uzbekistan – countries not known for having high average incomes – have won many more medals than India, despite having a far smaller national population. Why do 10 million Indians win less than one-hundredth of one Olympic medal, while 10 million Uzbeks won 4.7 Olympic medals?

Tourism subsidy roils India’s upscale waters

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on June 10, 2008

in India and Travel

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Bruce Stanley from Port Blair, The Andamans Islands, in The Wall Street Journal [From Mint]:

A cultural collision between working-class visitors and the local stewards of high-end tourism at this idyllic archipelago has raised temperatures here, laying bare prejudices and at times exciting a measure of greed on both sides.

The Asian tsunami in 2004 swamped this Indian territory in the Bay of Bengal and took some 20,000 lives. It also left hoteliers and tour operators grappling with the economic aftershocks, as spooked tourists stayed away. So, several months after the disaster, the Indian government began offering free plane tickets to civil servants and employees of big state companies to treat their families to an Andamans vacation.

In Kerala, an exodus economy

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on May 4, 2008

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From The National:

Thiruvalla, India: Everything about this city of some 60,000 people in southern Kerala – from the battery of job consultancies to endless technical training institutes – is geared towards helping people leave.

In Thiruvalla, travel agents abound, each one selling more than just a plane ticket. Thomas Beno, owner of Tomy’s Travels, does brisk business in facilitating exits – he helps get his clients passports, visas, whatever they need to get out of town, and out of the country.

“So many people are going to the UAE and the United Kingdom,” he said, sitting inside his small street-front shop among scores of similar shops.

The Internationalilst

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on April 26, 2008

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Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria, who has written a new book, The Post-American World, on the future of the Muslim world, whether American kids are decadent, and what the United States can learn from the Swiss. From 02138 magazine:

Q:You are responsible for covering the entire globe. How do you prioritize?

A: The most important thing is the column. What subject should I choose? Do I have anything value-added to say about it? How do I report on it properly? Who do I call? What should I read?

All these things feed into each other. When we are deciding the cover for Newsweek International, it’s like having meetings with an intelligence agency. There are all these people around the world saying, ‘This is what’s interesting.’ So then we decide what the most interesting is.

But I also step back, every now and then, and consider: If I were to write a book, what are the broad themes here? Is there a big story people are missing?

‘Brain gain’ for India as elite return

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on April 20, 2008

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Top-range salaries tempt back tens of thousands of highly skilled Indians who had moved to the West. Amelia Gentleman reports from New Delhi in The Observer, UK:

Ashutosh Gupta’s home in Richmond Park has all the lifestyle comforts that many educated Indians of his generation left India to attain – lush and peaceful gardens, a gym, a pool and, most important, unwavering electricity and water supplies.

This luxury block in the ultra-modern Delhi suburb of Gurgaon (about 4,000 miles from Richmond, London) houses several hundred Indian families who have recently returned from living in the West, part of a ‘reverse brain drain’ migration which is gathering speed.

Indian politicians are beginning to highlight, approvingly, the emerging phenomenon of ‘brain gain’, as large numbers of Indian-born executives decide that job opportunities and living conditions are as good, if not better, in India and make their way home.

Tibet is one thing, but India and China tensions spell bigger disaster

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on March 30, 2008

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The Sunday Times, UK, carries an extract from “Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade” by Bill Emmott:

It recognised the fact that while Al-Qaeda and its cohorts pose the biggest short-term and perhaps medium-term challenge to America, in the long term it is the expected shift in the world’s economic and political balance towards Asia that promises to have the greatest significance.

That is why this month’s events in Tibet, as well as the purchase by India’s Tata Motors of Land Rover and Jaguar from Ford, need to be seen in a wider context.

Bush, meanwhile, has managed to cast aside 40 years of hostility and suspicion between America and India – and even agreed to start collaborating over nuclear energy – in the hope of strengthening India and its economy. And all for a special reason: the rise of China.

The reverse Raj: Indian businesses turn tables on imperial master

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on March 30, 2008

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Britain took commercial and cultural advantage of India as its imperial master. Now a new generation of wealthy Indians is reversing the roles. Dean Nelson in The Sunday Times, UK:

The assembled businessmen wore black ties and listened politely to a string quartet under crystal chandeliers in a magnificent ballroom. The room buzzed with talk of the old country, but more importantly with commercial speculation about their new domain. What was to be their next takeover target in the local economy?

It could have been a sepia print of the British East India Company, which effectively ruled India as a private colony for 100 years, but a closer look revealed a different kind of burra sahib. More Chandigarh than Cheam, the men gathered at the Grosvenor House hotel in Mayfair, central London, last year were the representatives of a new Indian raj, powerful men intent on buying up chunks of the homeland of their old imperial masters.

Is this the Indian century?

Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian, UK:

Shishir Bajoria is meant to be talking about India’s rise and the world economy, but first he wants to raise the really big stuff. “Have you seen the cricket?” he asks, and launches into an unkind description of the Australian player he saw whingeing on telly this morning about the bullying Indian cricket board. “A white man – a white man! – complaining about racism.” And he throws up his palms as if to say, how upside down can you get?

That’s not the only topsy-turvy thing around here. Take our location: the Bengal Club, the leading social club in Calcutta, former capital of British India. There was a time when it wouldn’t have let the likes of Bajoria through the door. “In the Bengal Club, they don’t allow dogs or Indians,” reported Somerset Maugham in 1938, “but in the Yacht Club in Bombay they don’t mind dogs; it’s only Indians they don’t allow.”

Defending dictatorship: Another view on Pakistan

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on March 25, 2008

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S. Abbas Raza in n+1

A military dictatorship is a military dictatorship, and a democracy is a democracy. And the latter is always automatically better than the former. It is safer to agree with this statement and to look at every particular complex political situation through the lens of this cliché than to risk having one’s liberal-democratic credentials questioned. But as a friend of mine once remarked, “All arguments for democracy in Pakistan are theoretical. For dictatorships, the greatest argument is the actual experience of Pakistani democracies.” Very similarly, another friend recently commented that “There are of course no theoretical arguments for a dictatorship, only practical ones.” In the case of Pakistan, the last two civilian democratic governments were sham democracies, and while I by no means support everything Pervez Musharraf has done, especially recently, there are various things for which his government deserves praise. Moreover, while George W. Bush may have gotten almost everything else wrong, his Pakistan policy has been basically sound.

[via 3quarksdaily]

Pakistan’s new PM: Not a ‘yes man’

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on March 24, 2008

in Leaders and Pakistan

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Eminent Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir in The News:

The new prime minister of Pakistan has the distinction of saying a big no to both President Pervez Musharraf and late Benazir Bhutto many times. Yousuf Raza Gilani (photo) has always been loyal to his party but he is not a “yes man” and that is the quality which impressed PPP Co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari a lot.

Zardari nominated Gilani for the post of prime minister because he is sure that his nominee will not take any dictation either from the president or from any powerful diplomat. Only Zardari can take the risk of bringing a defiant person to the office of prime minister who may one day say no even to him.

Zardari remembers that Gilani said no to his leader Benazir Bhutto twice when he was Speaker of the National Assembly from 1993 to 1996. Gillani issued the production orders of some opposition MPs in 1994 who were in jail. Prime Minister Benazir was not ready to implement the orders of her own Speaker. She wanted to punish Sheikh Rashid Ahmad who used filthy language against her many times. Gilani took a stand. He argued that his orders must be implemented, otherwise he will resign from the post. Finally his orders were implemented.

And from BBC: By his own admission, Pakistan’s Prime Minister-designate Yusuf Raza Gillani, has not been one of the “good boys” of President Pervez Musharraf’s regime. The regime tried to coerce him into joining many of his Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) colleagues in switching sides. But Mr Gillani refused to do a deal with Mr Musharraf and his loyalty is much admired within his party. More:

Why Musharraf must go

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, who teaches colonial history and political economy at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, in The Times of India:

Over the past few weeks, Pakistanis have been suffering from prolonged power outages, a major reduction in the supply of gas, and a dramatic shortage of wheat flour. The situation reached crisis-like proportions about two weeks before February 18 and while things have not deteriorated further, they have not got much better either.

This is ironic given that the regime’s most celebrated success has been the ‘economic revival’ that it has engineered. Since October 1999 the government has initiated a series of economic ‘reform’ measures, which have met with the approval of the IMF and World Bank. The regime has been rewarded, particularly after the September 11 attacks in America, with massive inflows of financial assistance.

Tibet’s young and restless itch for fight

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on March 20, 2008

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From Mint, India:

The hum of prayer reverberates through this settlement of 22,000, across its monasteries and the palace. Some 250km west of Bangalore, Bylakuppe holds the distinction of being the biggest Tibetan settlement outside Tibet, bigger even than Dharamsala.
But confusion is beginning to creep into this peaceful town that lies amid fields of maize, ginger and chillies, as Tibetan youth find themselves battling over how to battle.

The youth have been divided over their future course of action by a despairing threat from the Dalai Lama to resign if violence in Tibet continued or escalated. On Tuesday, the Dalai Lama called Tibetan violence “suicidal” and expressed his reservations about batches of protest marches from Dharamsala to Lhasa. “Don’t commit violence, it is not good,” he said at a news conference. “Violence is against human nature, violence is almost suicide. Even if 1,000 Tibetans sacrifice their lives, it will not help.”

But, while one small segment seeks to accede to the Dalai Lama’s plea, a larger section still calls for meeting fire with fire.

[Photo: Tibetans hold candles during a prayer march in Bylakuppe, India]

China’s patchy Tibet blackout

Edward Cody from Beijing in The Washington Post:

As news reverberated around the world that bloody disturbances had erupted in Tibet, a star journalist for a leading Chinese newsmagazine was asked if he had any good sources in the remote mountain region. “Why?” he asked, unaware that anything was going on.

The reporter’s reaction was not unusual. When rioting by outraged Tibetans shook Lhasa last Friday, the Communist Party’s censorship apparatus tamped down news of the rampage, leaving most of China’s 1.3 billion people in the dark. Government-controlled television news ignored the crisis for the first few days, and Chinese newspapers were restricted to skeleton dispatches from the official New China News Agency.

It’s the Tibetan economy, stupid

Lack of economic opportunity fueled the riots in Tibet, says Abrahm Lustgarten, author of the upcoming “China’s Great Train: Beijing’s Drive West and the Campaign to Remake Tibet,” in The Washington Post:

On a winter night not long ago, I walked through the glowing doorway of Lhasa’s newest nightclub, Babila, for an interview with its owner, a Chinese entrepreneur. Disco balls spun from the ceiling. Fiber-optic strands of plastic beads drizzled down like rain to a long, sleek stainless steel bar. On the stage, dancers in stiletto heels and lingerie gyrated to thumping music.

“Tibetan culture is so deeply rooted here,” the owner told me. “I don’t think it will be diluted — it’s important for business.” Yet looking around, I saw no Tibetan employees, and Tibetans represented only a smattering of customers. The bar served mostly Chinese businessmen and army officers, whose tabs could run as high as $2,000, several times the per capita income in Tibet.

Pakistan election: rise of the middle classes

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on February 19, 2008

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The election has been a quiet triumph for upwardly mobile urban Pakistanis, says Jason Burke on The Guardian website.

Drive down the Grand Trunk Road from Lahore to the Pakistani capital of Islamabad and you would be forgiven for thinking that the idea that the strip of ragged bitumen symbolises Pakistan’s new prosperity is a bit far-fetched. The road slices across green fields with their bent-backed peasant farmers, scruffy bazaars and through rubbish-strewn cities such as Gujranwala. The landscape is hardly a picture of wealth and stability.

But, if you had travelled the road 10 years ago, you would be less inclined to argue. You might notice the number of new factories, the cheap concrete “shopping malls” with their tile and glass facades and the swarms of Suzuki Mehrans, the tiny four door car which is Pakistan’s best-selling vehicle.

Tata’s Nano: An ingenious coup

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on February 17, 2008

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Critics who focus on cost, environmental, or safety aspects of the Indian automaker’s “people’s car” are missing the point. Harold Sirkin, co-author of ‘Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation’, in BusinessWeek.

The media have been going gaga over Tata, more specifically over Indian automaker Tata Motors’ new Nano, the “one lakh” (100,000 rupees, or approximately $2,500 U.S.) car.

Ralph Kinney Bennett, for example, a longtime car buff, classic Cadillac collector, and for many years a senior magazine editor, hails the new four-door compact sedan as “the next Model T Ford or Volkswagen Beetle.” The Model T, of course, introduced in 1908-exactly 100 years ago-became what auto historians see as “the archetype of the American mass-produced gasoline automobile.”

Writing in the January/February issue of The American, a magazine for U.S. business and opinion leaders published by the American Enterprise Institute, Bennett says, “…the people at Tata know something that others seem to have forgotten. They have proven adept at learning not just the needs but the hopes and desires of their customer base.”

The inverted mirror image

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on February 16, 2008

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The latest in a plethora of books about China and India explains why both countries are in a win-win position. In Mint-Lounge, Chandrahas Choudhury reviews Harvard Business School academic Tarun Khanna’s book, Billions of Entrepreneurs (Penguin/Viking).

Early in his book Billions of Entrepreneurs, Harvard Business School academic Tarun Khanna cites a study that suggests that the combined economies of China and India accounted for possibly as much as half of the world’s gross domestic product two centuries ago. Thereafter, a combination of factors-the Industrial Revolution, the depredations of colonialism, inward-looking policies, internal conflicts-led to these two powerhouses being left behind by the rapidly modernizing and technologically advanced West. It is only recently that their comparative advantages in sectors of world trade have energized their long dormant economies and restored to their populace (though not evenly, not without costs and omissions) a mood of optimism and confidence.

Can China and India boom on regardless?

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on January 25, 2008

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The booming economies of China and India are not invulnerable, says Bill Emmott, former editor of the Economist, in The Guardian.

It is so nice when a consensus forms among economic commentators. There is going to be a recession in America, the pack says, and probably in Britain too, for we have both sinned with our debt, our deficits and our soaring house prices. But the world as a whole won’t suffer, as the great emerging economies of Asia – China and India – will carry on booming regardless. News that China’s output expanded by an extraordinary 11.4% last year, its fastest rate for 13 years, only strengthened this view.

When a consensus is so clear, it is always time to wonder whether it might be wrong. That contrarian instinct was reinforced this week by the way that Asian stock markets, including those in Mumbai, Shanghai and Hong Kong, reacted to markets in America and Europe by going through wild gyrations of their own. A widely followed measure of such shares, the MCSI Emerging Asia Index, was at one point this week down 25% from its October high.

Why should that be, if Asia is just going to boom on regardless?