US and India - Moving closer

Relations between India and the United States seem to be going from strength to strength if high-level visits and joint statements are anything to go by. In recent weeks, the U.S. Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defence were in India. This was followed by the third U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue in Washington in the second week of June. The Strategic Dialogue, now an annual event, is a reflection of the extremely close ties that have developed between the two sides since the signing of the landmark nuclear agreement in 2008. External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna led India’s high-level ministerial delegation to the Strategic Dialogue. Indian officials said that a gamut of issues were up for discussion, ranging from education to the promotion of democracy.

The main purpose of the Strategic Dialogue was to further enhance military and strategic ties between the two countries. Nancy Powell, the U.S. Ambassador designate to India, said that the U.S. expected to sell $8 billion worth of arms to India in the coming years. As the U.S. “pivots” militarily to the Asia Pacific, an important role is being assigned to India. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta described India as the “linchpin” in the American strategy of rebalancing towards the Asia Pacific.

At the Shangri-La meet in Singapore in early June, which was attended by Panetta and Indian Defence Minister A.K. Antony, both sides expressed a similarity of views. Both Panetta and Antony stressed the freedom of navigation in the Asia-Pacific region. China, embroiled in territorial disputes with its pro-U.S. neighbours, suspects that the new U.S. strategy is to convert the South China Sea into a U.S. lake and control key choke points such as the Malacca Straits, through which most of the oil it imports is transported.

American waiver

But what grabbed international headlines was the American decision not to penalise India and close U.S. allies such as Japan, South Korea and Turkey for continuing to import oil from Iran despite the Washington-imposed sanctions on that country. The decision was announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just before the start of the Strategic Dialogue. She said the countries were being granted waivers from financial sanctions for “significantly reducing” their oil imports from Iran. Hillary Clinton said the announcement underscored the success of the Obama administration’s sanctions policy against Iran.

Since the Obama administration’s draconian sanctions against Iran, India significantly scaled down its economic ties with Iran. From being one of India’s biggest suppliers of crude, Iran is now in the third place, after Saudi Arabia and Iraq. In the third week of June, the U.S. State Department, however, clarified that the waiver was valid only for a month. The Obama administration will continue to keep a strict watch over India’s dealings with Iran.

China, along with Singapore, was among the countries not given an exemption. China imports a fifth of its oil from Iran. This oil is blended in Singapore’s refineries. The U.S. has only threatened sanctions against China, but given the interdependent nature of economic relations between the U.S. and China and the perilous nature of the world economy, it is unlikely that the U.S. will take action against the Chinese banking sector. Singapore is a close political and military ally of the U.S., besides being a key international trading entrepot.

Indian officials insisted that they did not ask for an American waiver and claimed that U.S. pressure had very little to do with the sharp reduction of import of oil from Iran. They claimed that the decision to look for oil from other countries was dictated by strategic calculations and market forces.

Trilateral talks

The second important development was the signing of an agreement between the U.S. and India to hold regular trilateral talks involving Afghanistan. For some time U.S. officials have wanted India to play a bigger role in the training of Afghan security forces as American military forces prepare to leave the country in 2014. Both the U.S. and India already have separate strategic agreements with Afghanistan.

According to reports appearing in the American media, it was the sharp deterioration of the U.S’ ties with Pakistan that prompted the Obama administration to rope in India. The U.S. evidently hopes that India will act as a counterweight to Pakistan in the post-2014 scenario in Afghanistan.
On June 14, Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said that the government of Afghanistan was his country’s “most important partner”. Pakistan’s worst-case scenario is an increased Indian footprint in Afghanistan, which it considers its backyard. Until 2010, the U.S., on Pakistan’s request, had agreed to keep India out of conferences involving Afghanistan’s immediate neighbours. With relations between Washington and Islamabad going downhill since then, New Delhi’s role in Afghanistan was given more importance by the Obama administration. At the Strategic Dialogue, the role of Pakistan in Afghanistan was disparaged, with U.S. officials highlighting Islamabad’s role in harbouring and supporting terrorists.

The joint statement issued after the conclusion of the dialogue “reiterated that success in Afghanistan and regional and global security require elimination of safe havens and infrastructure for terrorism and violent extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan”. In 2011, India was invited to a conference in Turkey attended by Afghanistan’s neighbours.

New Delhi is also hosting, in late June, an international conference whose objective is to encourage investments in Afghanistan. Pakistan has been given an invitation. Speaking in Washington, S.M. Krishna said the new agreement on Afghanistan had a security component. “Security would certainly form an important segment,” he told the media.

Panetta, during his recent visit to New Delhi, raised the issue of increased Indian involvement in Afghanistan. In a speech delivered at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), he stressed the need to “further deepen” the military relationship between the two countries. He declared that the two countries had “opened a new chapter” in their relationship and expressed his confidence that the new relationship would “become more strategic, more practical and more collaborative”.

India has been involved in infrastructure projects in Afghanistan and has given $2 billion as development aid to the war-ravaged country. India has been very supportive of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and was initially apprehensive about the consequences of the American troop withdrawal from the country.

During his visit to the subcontinent, Panetta harped on the point that his country’s patience with Pakistan was fast running out. The Defence Secretary was not at all apologetic about the drone strikes that the U.S. had unleashed on the hapless residents of Afghanistan and Pakistan. New Delhi seems prepared to play along with Washington to an extent, but Indian officials insist that there is no question of any physical deployment of troops in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the Western forces.

Other countries, too, are keen to play a big role in Afghanistan after 2014. At the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in June, member-countries pledged to play a bigger role in Afghanistan. Chinese President Hu Jintao, who hosted the summit in Beijing, said the SCO would play a “bigger role in the peaceful reconstruction of Afghanistan”. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who was present at the summit, said China would “play a very significant role in bringing Afghanistan and Pakistan together” to jointly fight the war against terror and extremism.

The ‘India card’

Robert Grenier, a retired senior official of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and an expert on South Asia, wrote that Panetta’s “gambit in New Delhi is merely a new form of coercion against Pakistan”. Grenier observed that America’s strategic relationships with Israel and India “have more in common than is often appreciated”. The U.S., he said, was cautious of the practical use to which its alliance with Israel had been put and it should likewise exercise great caution in playing the “India card” against Pakistan.

Panetta, during his visit to India, was careful to avoid discussing controversial issues such as the Logistic Support Agreement (LSA), the Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum Agreement (CISMOA) and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-Spatial Cooperation (BECA). The LSA allows the reciprocal use of maintenance, servicing and communications, among other things.

On previous high-profile visits, U.S. officials tried to pressure India into signing these agreements. America’s close partners have all signed these agreements. India has been saying that the agreements will jeopardise its strategic independence and imperil operational autonomy while operating American-supplied military equipment.

Panetta said in New Delhi that signing these agreements was unnecessary. “Not signing these agreements is no barrier to further military relations,” he said. New Delhi has also so far refused to sign the “end users” agreement, which allows the U.S. to inspect the weaponry it has sold to India.

Panetta said the U.S. was firmly committed to selling the best defence weaponry to India. “Over the long term we will transition our defence trade beyond the buyer-seller relationship to substantial co-production and eventually high technology joint research and development,” Panetta said.

India has conducted the largest number of military joint exercises with the U.S. since 2001 to ensure “functional interoperability” between the two armies. They have jointly conducted counter-insurgency exercises in sensitive areas such as Kashmir and the north-eastern region of the country. Indeed, the military embrace of the two countries is getting tighter by the day.


Source: 

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2913/stories/20120713291305800.htm

India in Central Asia

As negotiations for the withdrawal of international security forces in Afghanistan by 2014 gather pace, India has decided to revive its only overseas military base in Farkhor, Tajikistan. Officials from the Ministry of External Affairs will travel there next month to finalise arrangements, following which Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon is expected to visit India in September.

The revival of the Farkhor airbase and the upgrading of the military hospital on its premises, where former Northern Alliance leader and ‘Lion of Panjshir’ Ahmed Shah Massoud was treated for his fatal injuries from the suicide bomb attack on September 9, 2011 — two days before the September 11 incidents in America — is a crucial link to India’s revamped Connect Central Asia policy unveiled in June at a dialogue forum in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, by Minister of State for External Affairs E. Ahamed.

With India’s risk-averse corporate community unwilling to follow the government’s lead in establishing a firmer footprint in the region since the break-up of the Soviet Union 20 years ago, Delhi has come to the conclusion that it must use its own muscle to project its strategic presence in Central Asia.

Much has already been written about this hydrocarbon-rich region and how China, Russia and U.S.-dominated western consortiums have laid networks of oil-and-gas pipelines to service their own markets. China, especially, has used energy supplies from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to fuel its relentless rise as an economic power – but the truth is that none of these benignly authoritarian regimes are complaining.

Kazakhstan has leveraged the sale of its energy resources to become, with a per-capita GDP of $13,000 in purchasing power parity terms, the richest state in all of Central Asia. Astana, a windy city in the Siberian steppe, was transformed into the capital in 1997 by a diktat of its President, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and today its skyline is littered with glass-and-gold-domed buildings. Divided by a river — the Ishim — that runs through the town, Astana has a Left Bank and a Right Bank, besides a glass-and-concrete pramid that doubles up as an exhibition space and a concert hall that looks like the Parthenon. Outsiders may wonder at the copycat Disneyland, but the Kazakhs are certainly not complaining.

Mr. Nazarbayev is hardly a latter-day version of Mohammed bin Tughlaq — who whimsically moved his capital from Delhi to the Deccan in the 14th century and then had to move it back — although he completely controls the state apparatus. Mr. Nazarbayev decided, when he came to Delhi for the Republic Day festivities in 2009, that 25 per cent of the Satpayev oil block will be given to OVL. Both China’s CNOOC and U.S.’ Chevron already had their share of Kazakh energy spoils and Mr. Nazarbayev wanted to expand options. (His wife is also believed to have been a follower of the Sathya Sai Baba, thereby adding to the India connection.)

That’s the general perception of India in Central Asia — that it is a rising regional power, not quite in the league of China but interesting to behold because of its enormous market, its incredible culture, its singular capacity to innovate and even its fractious democracy. India is not a priority, but it cannot be ignored.

Interestingly enough, a mirror-perception about Central Asia persists among the Indian elite. The land of Babur (Uzbekistan) and Bairam Khan (Turkmenistan) and Mirza Hiadar Dughlati (Kazakhstan) and Bedil (Tajikistan) is still cloaked in the mist of history and its combined 65 million population has largely been ignored. Although most Central Asian capitals are a couple of hours away from Delhi by air, the lack of connectivity by rail or road means that serious business interest is almost absent.

So China-Central Asia trade tips the scales at $29 billion and U.S.-Central Asia trade touches $26 billion while India-Central Asia trade stands at only $500 million (excluding investment in the Satpayev oil block and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India, or TAPI, gas pipeline, which will take five years to fructify). That’s why India must do things differently if it has to return to Central Asia.

Alongside the revival of the Farkhor airbase in Tajikistan and the upgrading of the defence relationship with Dushanbe, private hospital chains like Max are being persuaded to set up trauma centres — if not hospitals — in key cities all over the region. Plans are afoot to start an India-Central Asia university in Bishkek. An e-information technology network is on the cards, just like in key countries in Africa. Meanwhile, talks are on with a Russian channel with a treasure trove of Hindi films, perfectly dubbed into Russian, to expand broadcast all over Central Asia. From Raj Kapoor to Shahrukh Khan, Bollywood is still the key to open hearts and minds in Central Asia.

With the western withdrawal from Afghanistan on the cards, the Central Asian pot will boil further. India lost the opportunity to drive deep into the region when the Soviet Union collapsed 20 years, but it’s now getting a second chance.

Hopefully Delhi won’t mess it up again.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article3659982.ece

Not missing the wood for the gold

In ancient Indian chronicles, Myanmar was known as Suvarnabhumi or the “golden land”' already famous for its boundless riches. Its fabled wealth of gold, silver, precious gems and much more, attracted invaders and traders from around the world. There is now a 21st century version of a “gold rush” beginning to take hold as Myanmar opens its doors to the world. Nothing demonstrates this more starkly than the U.S. government decision to lift the prohibition on new American investment in Myanmar including doing business with state owned oil companies. This is despite the public plea from the leader of the country’s democracy movement, Aung San Suu Kyi, that such deals should be avoided until these entities embrace transparent practices and remove corruption.

Lure of opportunities

At the U.S.-Asean meeting at Siem Reap, Cambodia, which concluded on July 13, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had her second meeting with Myanmar President Thein Sein and the two later addressed the strong business contingent accompanying Ms Clinton. It was announced that a 70-member U.S. business delegation would soon visit Myanmar to explore trade and investment opportunities. Other western and Asian states are likely to follow. Clearly the lure of commercial opportunities and profit has triumphed over the hitherto careful alignment with the pace set by Ms Suu Kyi. As this trend gains strength, Ms Suu Kyi will lose one of the more potent bargaining chips she has in dealing with the military dominated government, that is her ability to calibrate the dismantling of western sanctions that have been in place for the past two-and-a-half decades. This may well lead to opinion in India that we, too, should join this rush or face further marginalisation in a key neighbouring country.

This may not be the best strategy to pursue.

In Siem Reap, Mr. Thein Sein spelt out three reforms which were on the top of his agenda. The first, he said, was to consolidate democracy, build strong democratic institutions and restore the fundamental rights of people, including the freedom of speech and assembly. The second was to achieve lasting peace in the country by reaching out to the various ethnic groups and bringing them into the national mainstream. And the third was to transform an essentially centralised economy into a market oriented one, open to foreign investment and commercial exchanges. In each of these areas India can offer itself as a significant and long-term partner, relevant to Myanmar’s own identified priority areas. India should avoid falling victim to a herd mentality but instead focus on establishing a long-term and sustainable presence in the country, encompassing political, security and economic fields. Myanmar may currently be the flavour of the month. For India, it must remain on the menu as a key foreign policy and security challenge in a rapidly changing environment.

Why is Myanmar important to India?

Here is a neighbour with whom we share a 1,600 km long land boundary. Four of our sensitive northeastern States — Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram — lie along this border. In dealing with the complex security situation prevailing in this region, Myanmar's cooperation is often critical. The two countries also share the strategic waters of the Bay of Bengal. Any hostile or inimical presence along the Myanmarese coast or on its off-shore islands facing India would be of great concern. Myanmar is also critical to the success of India’s Look East policy. It is India’s gateway to Asean and a transit country for trade and economic exchanges with southern China. The sub-regional organisation of BIMSTEC, which straddles both South and South-East Asia, gives a pivotal role to Myanmar as a regional hub. India has long standing historical, cultural and religious links with Myanmar which underpin a broad-based relationship. There are cross-border ethnic links, too, with Naga and Mizo tribes inhabiting both sides of the India-Myanmar border. The prospects for an enhanced economic partnership, in particular, in the energy sector will add to this substantive and comprehensive relationship, but only as a significant component, not as a singular rationale for engagement.

Significant presence

India’s interests require a significant, but not a dominant presence in Myanmar. Countervailing China’s hitherto overweening presence in Myanmar could not be an Indian preoccupation alone. Our interests are served as Myanmar’s foreign relations become more diversified, lowering the salience of Chinese influence.

In this context, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Myanmar in the last week of May was a major initiative. India tried to align itself with the priorities set by the Myanmar leadership itself, including Ms Suu Kyi. The Prime Minister offered Indian expertise and support in the setting up of strong democratic institutions and build capacity in parliamentary practice and procedures. India’s own experience in managing a multi-ethnic, multicultural and plural democracy is a useful point of reference as Myanmar seeks to pursue reconciliation and accommodation with its several ethnic minorities. On the economic side, the visit resulted in a number of important agreements, the most notable being the extension of a $500 million credit line to finance several projects. The two sides agreed to launch a Border Area Development Programme, which will seek to establish development corridors along the ambitious cross-border transport links that are being put in place. This will be of considerable relevance to the development of our own northeast.

The Prime Minister met Ms Suu Kyi in Yangon and extended her an invitation to visit India which she accepted. This will take place later this year. The meeting was warm and friendly with both sides eager to dispel the sense of disappointment which had resulted from India’s engagement with the Myanmar generals while she was languishing under house arrest.

Ms Suu Kyi focussed on the development challenges facing her country, particularly the alleviation of poverty among her people and was keenly interested in India’s own experience in this regard. As member of Parliament, she has declared her intention to work hard for the betterment of the lives of people, promote inter-ethnic harmony and national reconciliation and contribute to the consolidation of democracy in her country. She recognises that the way ahead is full of risks and uncertainties. One cannot say that the reform process is irreversible. Ms Suu Kyi has also been careful in her statements on the ethnic issue, which could erupt in dangerous ways. The Kachin insurgency lingers on and the recent violence in the Rakhine province involving the Rohingyas has confronted her with difficult political challenges which are not easy to resolve. In the initiatives that Ms Suu Kyi may adopt to take a leadership role in addressing these challenges, India could be a friendly and supportive partner.

India should, therefore, avoid being distracted by the gold rush and remain focussed on the long term. It has a unique opportunity to align itself with the priorities set by the leaders of Myanmar and make its own contribution to enabling a successful political and economic transition in a strategic neighbouring country.

This is a more sensible way of ensuring India’s political, economic and security interests in its strategic neighbourhood than joining the unseemly grab for resources that appears to have gripped Myanmar’s erstwhile detractors.

Source:- http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article3655681.ece

When India clothed the world

This is an old one but worth a read....from The Hindu.

Indian textiles dating between 14th to early 19th century, which are on display in Singapore, reveal the creativity of Indian artists with their striking patterns and inventive motifs. It also traces the history of trade and cultural exchanges during the time when India might be said to have clothed the world.

The impact of Indian philosophies and religions on the cultures of Asia and beyond is well-known. But an on-going exhibition of 70 rare textiles at Singapore’s Asian civilizations museum (ACM), Patterns of Trade: Indian Textiles for Export 1400-1900 , has brought focus on the popularity of Indian textile art during medieval and ancient times.

“Historical records that date back to first century China and Rome point towards beautiful and richly drawn, painted and dyed, cottons and luscious hand woven silks from India. The Romans evocatively described the fine Indian muslins as ‘woven air’, which were so popular that Pliny – a famous Roman statesman – protested about Rome’s coffers being emptied to cater to the vanity of Roman women,” informs Marina Thayil, volunteer docent at ACM.

The oldest examples of Indian trade textiles have been found at sites near the Red Sea. Small fragments from 15th century were discovered at the Greek trading post of Berenike in Southern Egypt. Other discoveries at Quesir Al Qadim and Fustat, both in Egypt, have been dated to ninth and 10th centuries respectively.

By 15th century, Indian textile traders had developed a complex network from Africa to China. When Europeans landed on Indian shores in their quest for spices, they were also seduced by the high-quality materials, colour-fast dyes, floral patterns, sacred motifs, and geometric forms of the Indian textiles.

Though most designs depicted traditional Indian patterns such as elephant hunts, animals, rows of lively dancers, and even elegantly dressed women battling fantastic beasts, textile artists also responded to foreign demand and adapted designs to regional tastes. Moreover, textile designs from India influenced designers all around the world. The bright floral prints and dense rich styles of Victorian and Edwardian Britain were direct descendants of Indian chintzes traded to Europe few hundred years ago. “These textile arts show the spread of multifaceted Indian culture with all its subtleties across several continents, and especially to South-East Asia,” added Alan Chong, director at ACM.

During the peak of the trade in mid-17th century, millions of yards of Indian cloth were being sold in markets as far as Japan, Africa, Middle-East and Europe. India's central location in the Indian Ocean basin was ideal for trading textiles to both East and West, with Gujarat, the Coromandel Coast and Bengal being the major trading centres.

Artisans in India used natural dyes to colour textiles as they lasted for a long time without fading. The leaves of the indigo plant was used to produce blue; roots of madder, shell of lac beetle and wood of sappan tree for red; seed of myrobalan tree, jackfruit tree root, turmeric and pomegranate rinds for yellow; an extract of acacia tree for brown; and a mineral form of iron acetate to produce black. The artists used to over-dye yellow on indigo blue for producing the green colour.

The most widely-used production technique was called Ikat (a Malay word which means ‘to tie’). In this, the threads were tied and dyed prior to being woven into cloth. This was done either with warp (vertical) or weft (horizontal) threads. When both were dyed before weaving, it was called double Ikat or Patola . “The technique of producing Patolas was so skilled that the art remains in only three places in the modern world – Tengana in East Bali, Indonesia, Ryuku islands in Japan, and in Patan, Gujarat – where only one extended family of weavers called Salvi still continue this tradition,” said Thayil.

Other techniques included Kalamkari, resist dyeing (batik) and block printing. Kalamkari was a method used to draw or paint designs onto cloth using a mordant – a colourless substance that binds dye to the cloth. In batik technique, molten wax or some other thick paste containing ash or mud was painted onto the cloth to block the absorption of colour in a dye bath. The medieval Indian textile trade to Europe mainly depicted design pattern called Chintz, which was resist-dyed fine cotton with elaborate floral designs. Another diamond-shaped pattern called Geringsing, was found in double Ikat Patola clothes traded in Asia. The Balinese weavers of Tengana still produce clothes with this motif using the weft- Ikat technique. But the trade declined in mid-19th century when Europe was exporting more cloth to India than it imported. “Earlier, a combination of high-quality, low prices and striking designs made sure that even high-tariffs and import restrictions such as the British Calico Act of 1701, couldn’t do much to halt the Indian textile trade. But in the late 18th century, European artists adopted Indian wood-block-printing techniques, invented synthetic dyes and developed cheaper manufacturing methods such as engraved copper plates and roller printing. The advent of steam power during the industrial revolution resulted in exponential increase in productivity, enabling European traders to capture much of the Asian and African markets with cheaper and better quality clothes. Thus ending the 500-years of Indian monopoly over the world's textile trade,” concluded Thayil.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-business/article3561090.ece

Financial Reforms

Slowdown in the growth of gross domestic product (GDP), a virtual stagnation in industrial production and the risk of losing investment grade rating by international rating agencies like Standard and Poor's has rattled the government, industry and policymakers. The dominant view — as expressed by influential members of the government and other policymakers — favours the introduction of major liberalisation policies aimed at facilitating the entry of foreign direct investment (FDI) in service sectors like retail trade, insurance, legal and other services as a means of reversing the slowdown. In my opinion, such an approach is flawed. Sustained growth is not possible without a healthy and growing manufacturing sector; attracting FDI in the services sector would at best play only a minor role. Indeed, India's overdependence on the service sector and the neglect of its manufacturing sector is partly responsible for the deceleration in growth. Results from most research studies show that for India, the service sector cannot be the engine for a sustained growth of income and employment. Like China, India should also concentrate on the manufacturing sector, for, in the long run, the growth of the service sector would also depend on the manufacturing base.

Real constraints

Research studies, by and large, zero in on two sets of constraints that stand in the way of the development of Indian manufacturing sector: physical and government infrastructure. These two are, in a way, related and could reinforce each other. In the last few years, India has not invested sufficiently in physical infrastructure like electricity, roads, ports and railways. This has resulted in huge shortages in electricity supply relative to demand, leading to long hours of load shedding, power holidays and even closure of several manufacturing units. Some of the large enterprises have opted for captive electricity generating plants, resulting in high costs and making their products globally non-competitive. Small and medium enterprises cannot afford captive power units and they are the main victims of power shortage.

Likewise investments in roads and railways have been inadequate, hampering the development of the manufacturing sector by increasing the cost of transportation. The presence of corruption and bad governance has made the situation worse. It is common knowledge that only a fraction of the investments on roads and other infrastructure projects actually reach the targeted projects as the leakages are large. This leads to the second set of constraints for manufacturing growth, namely, governance infrastructure.

Numerous studies show a strong relationship between good (corruption free) governance and investment climate. In the current globalised investment and trade regime, the same set of variables influences both foreign and domestic investment. At present, faced with 0.1 per cent growth rate in the industrial sector, the government is planning to offer interest rate and fiscal incentives to reduce costs and stimulate investment. In this context, it is important to note that corruption is also like a tax that pushes up the costs — the only difference being the sums collected through bribes do not go to the government but to private individuals. Thus, given the high levels of corruption, merely reducing interest rates might not be effective in making Indian enterprises more competitive.

High levels of corruption, in addition to pushing up costs, also adversely affect the quality of investment. It is now fairly well established that corrupt countries mainly receive investments from other corrupt countries, which does not result in technology transfer leading to global competitiveness. Thus, bad governance affects both the quantity and quality of investment. Moreover, even medium sized Indian enterprises are now investing in other countries and import products from their foreign units into India. Last year, the FDI outflow from India was more than 60 per cent of the FDI inflow into India. Newspaper reports indicate that this year FDI outflows from India could be equal to or even exceed FDI inflows into India. Indian enterprises find it difficult to do business in the current Indian environment and prefer to set up units in other countries and import the products into India. Furthermore, while the manufacturing sector dominates Indian investments abroad, foreign investments in India are mainly in the service sector, construction activities and real estate. This alarming situation cannot be reversed without major reforms that target good governance and removal of corruption.

Scams and reforms

In the last few years, major scams have broken out in resources sectors that are mainly owned by the government — like real estate, mining and ores, and spectrum.

Quite a lot of individuals who have obtained government permission to enter and exploit these resource sectors have amassed billions of rupees. In other words, under the existing business environment, the path to amass wealth is not through manufacturing but through exploitation of resources under government ownership. This needs to change. It is alleged that as a result of these scams, decision-making in the government has come to a standstill as bureaucrats are afraid to take decisions. It is strange that officials have been vested with many discretionary powers which they now rightly refuse to exercise. Corruption mainly takes place where important discretionary powers are vested with the decision maker and where rules are not clear-cut and decision making is not transparent. The way out of the mess is to reform the decision-making process by making it transparent and rule-based and by drastically reducing the discretionary powers of officials. So far, despite brave declarations of intent, no serious attempt has been made in this direction of administrative reforms.

In addition to administrative reforms, the government should also introduce rules and laws to drastically discourage cash transactions and cash holdings. Corruption cannot be reduced so long as cash transactions dominate. Newspapers frequently report police and income tax raids and the discovery of huge amounts of cash kept at home, offices and lockers. Subsequently, in many instances, the cases are dropped as the individuals succeed in explaining the source of their cash holdings. In this context, it is vital to introduce laws that discourage cash transactions. Drastic situations need drastic remedies. To discourage cash transactions, the government could place a limit on cash transactions. For example the government could declare that any transaction, say, above Rs. 5000 should be a bank or credit card transaction and not a cash transaction. This will bring huge expenditures on items like consumer durables, hotels and resorts under bank transactions and increase accountability. Likewise, the government could place a limit to cash holdings at homes, offices and lockers. The limit could be as low as one or two lakh rupees.

To conclude, a high growth rate for the Indian economy cannot be sustained without a vibrant and growing manufacturing sector. A policy aimed at GDP growth based mainly on attracting investment in the services sector will not succeed. Moreover, a thriving manufacturing sector is vital for employment generation. Under these circumstances, reforms should be aimed at good governance, transparent and time bound decision-making, reduction of currency transactions and holdings, and the rule of law.

Source:- http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article3526040.ece

Indo-Pak Relations

In March 2011, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)-led government resumed the composite dialogue with India, with the rapid pace of its economic liberalisation program demonstrating political will to normalise bilateral relations. The November 2011 decision to grant Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India by the end of 2012 is not merely an economic concession but also a significant political gesture. Departing from Pakistan’s traditional position, the democratic government no longer insists on linking normalisation of relations with resolution of the Kashmir dispute. India no longer insists on making such normalisation conditional on demonstrable Pakistani efforts to rein in India-oriented jihadi groups, particularly the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT), responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks and hence suspension of the composite dialogue. The two countries need to build on what they have achieved, notably in promising economic areas, to overcome still serious suspicion among hardliners in their security elites and sustain a process that is the best chance they have had for bilateral peace and regional stability.

Within Pakistan, the normalisation process enjoys broad political support, including from the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz, PML-N), the largest opposition party. Viewing liberalised trade with India as in Pakistan’s economic interest, the PML-N also believes that broader economic ties would provide a more conducive environment to address longstanding disputes like Kashmir.

Liberalised trade, stronger commercial links and deeper bilateral economic investment would strengthen moderate forces in Pakistan’s government, political parties, business community and civil society. Yet, an effective integration of the two economies would only be possible if Pakistani and Indian traders, business representatives and average citizens could travel more freely across borders. For this, the stringent visa regime must be relaxed, including by significantly reducing processing times, granting multiple-entry visas, eliminating police reporting requirements and removing limits on cities authorised and the obligation for entry and exit from the same point.

However, Pakistan’s ability to broaden engagement with India and move beyond Kashmir depends on a sustained democratic transition, with elected leaders gaining control over foreign and security policy from the military. Pakistan must also counter anti-India oriented, military-backed extremist groups. These include the LeT – banned after the 2011 attacks on the Indian parliament but re-emerging as the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JD) – as well as the Jaish-e-Mo­hammad and similarly aligned outfits. A powerful military, deeply hostile towards India, still supports such groups and backs the Pakistan Defence Council (PDC, Defa-e-Pakistan Council), a new alliance of jihadi outfits and radical Islamic and other parties aligned with the military that seeks to derail the dialogue process.

Within India, with suspicions of Pakistani intentions still high, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has limited political support for talks that do not prioritise the terrorist threat. Another Mumbai-style attack by a Pakistan-based jihadi group would make such a dialogue untenable. It could also provoke a military confrontation between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. Meanwhile New Delhi’s heavy-handed suppression of dissent and large military footprint in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) alienates Kashmiris, undermines Pakistani constituencies for peace and emboldens jihadi groups and hardliners in the military and civil bureaucracies.

There are numerous other impediments. Water disputes, for example, could place the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) of 1960, which has successfully regulated the distribution of a precious resource between the two countries for over five decades, under greater strain. India, with its larger population and mushrooming energy requirements, uses much more of the shared waters, and its domestic needs are rising, while Pakistan depends increasingly on them for its agriculture. With India constructing several dams in the Indus River Basin, the Pakistani military and jihadi groups now identify water disputes as a core issue, along with Kashmir, that must be resolved if relations are to be normalised.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To build on the momentum of, and demonstrate commitment to, the dialogue process

To the Government of Pakistan:

1.  Implement its pledge to grant MFN status to India by the end of 2012.

2.  Punish those involved in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, communicating any challenges to trials of the accused or related legal processes, including military interference, to Indian counterparts.

3.  Act against banned groups that operate freely and against any groups and individuals calling for jihad against India, invoking laws against incitement to violence.

4.  Take action against all militant groups, including India- and Afghanistan-oriented jihadi outfits.

To the Government of India:

5.  Respond to the above steps by:

a) acknowledging that non-tarrif barriers (NTBs) are a legitimate Pakistani grievance and ensuring that Pakistani exporters have unimpeded access to the Indian market under the MFN regime; and

b) repealing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and other draconian laws, replacing a military-led counter-insurgency approach in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) with accountable policing and holding a meaningful dialogue with all Kashmiri groups.

To the Governments of Pakistan and India:

6.  Grant each other overland transit rights.

7.  Relax visa regimes significantly.

8.  Focus on short, medium and long-term measures to optimise the use of water resources, going beyond project-related disputes that the IWT can already address.

9.  Prioritise cooperation on joint energy-related ventures, such as petroleum product pipelines from India to Pakistan, and assess the feasibility of a bilateral, and at a later stage regional, energy grid.

10.  Ensure Kashmiri participation in the dialogue process.

Source - http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/asia/south-asia/pakistan/224-pakistans-relations-with-india-beyond-kashmir.aspx?utm_source=indiapakistanemail&utm_medium=execsum&utm_campaign=mremail

BRICS vs Summit of the Americas

Summit diplomacy has become the coin of the realm. More and more key global and regional issues are thrashed out among heads of state and government, skipping the intermediaries. Professional diplomats don't like summits. Yet, given the urgent tasks, the crowded international agenda, and the increased tempo of diplomacy, there isn't much choice: summits are here to stay. This is particularly true of serial summits — that is, the institutionalised, regularly scheduled meetings at the top, like the G20, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation or India Brazil, South Africa (IBSA).

Not all of them succeed. Performance varies. Some are better prepared than others. At first, APEC grew in leaps and bounds. Its summits drew enormous attention. Yet, now they are stuck in neutral. The G7 summit was for many years the most powerful. Now it plays second fiddle to G20. Sometimes we get two back-to-back summits whose radically different outcomes illustrate not just the varying capabilities of summit management, the work of the sherpas (i.e. the top aides to the heads), and the leadership abilities of the heads, but also underlying trends in world politics.

Success & fiasco

This was the case of the recent BRICS summit (in New Delhi on March 30-31) and the Summit of the Americas (in Cartagena, Colombia, April 14-15). The outcomes could not have been more different — one a resounding success, the other a remarkable fiasco. The BRICS group is dismissed by some as nothing more than an acronym in search of a role, a “solution in search of a problem”. A first line of criticism is that the five member states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have little in common. As a group formed by democracies and non-democracies hailing from four different continents, of very different size and economic performance, of varying economic interests, they would have no business even in meeting together, let alone in developing common agendas, or, God forbid, joint policy initiatives. Given that, notwithstanding these objections, the meetings are nonetheless taking place — this one was the fourth annual gathering — and the group has expanded with the addition of South Africa in 2010.

Russia's presence is irksome to others. The standard line is that Russia should not be rubbing shoulders with “emerging powers”, since Mother Russia herself is no such thing. Russia, according to this argument, is the ultimate “declining power” — demographically, economically and politically. Given this condition, what Moscow should do, presumably, would be to search for other such declining powers in the world (Greece? Japan? Mali?) and join them as “like-minded” nations, rather than doing so with the Chinas and Indias of this world. That is why many prefer to talk of “BICS”, leaving out Russia altogether and conforming, in their imagination, a fictional group more palatable to the taste of Western observers.

All of this is nonsense. Russia's per capita income has quadrupled since the late 1990s. International politics is not reducible to similarities and differences in political economy, though intragroup trade has grown at 28 per cent a year since 2000, reached $230 billion in 2010 and is planned to reach $ 500 billion in 2015. Agency also plays a role. And the proof is in the pudding. Far from attempting to dissolve their alleged differences into empty platitudes, the heads of the BRICS countries, most of them significant world leaders in their own right — from Brazil's Dilma Rousseff to India's Manmohan Singh — came up with a substantial, extensive, 50-paragraph communiqué after their Delhi deliberations. The latter does not stick solely to economic issues, but ranges much more widely. It addresses key questions on the international agenda, such as the crisis in Syria, the stand-off with Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In all of them, it takes stands that vary quite significantly from the perspective of Western powers.

Cartagena summit

Fast forward to Cartagena. The Summit of the Americas has been around since 1994, much longer than BRICS; it brings together a much larger group of countries (34, when they all attend); they all come from the same part of the world, the Western Hemisphere, and all of them are “market democracies” of one kind or another. It also meets once every three years, allowing plenty of time for preparing and agreeing on a common agenda. Under such circumstances, one would expect considerable room for consensus and forward movement, for joint ventures to take on challenges like the drug trade, the escalating murder rate in Central America or the issue of immigration to the United States, which have been clamouring for solutions for years, to no avail. The fact that South America has been undergoing an economic boom, fuelled by world-wide demand for commodities, would seem to help. The U.S., bent on doubling its exports in five years, as per President Obama's commitment, is in need of Latin markets. Already, the U.S. exports more to Latin America than to Europe.

Latin America's rise

The fact that the meeting was held in Colombia is testimony to how far Latin America has come in the past decade. Ten, even five years ago, this would have been unthinkable, given the country's internal conflicts, driven by insurgent guerrilla groups like FARC and the ELN and drug cartels like those of Cali and Medellin. In fact, Mr. Obama is the first U.S. President to spend three days in Colombia. Under the able leadership of Presidents Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010) and now Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia has scaled down the violence and returned to the international arena. President Santos performed a key role in this in his previous responsibilities as Minister of Defense. As President, he has surprised many by his pragmatic approach to problem-solving, overcoming long-standing differences with Venezuela, and stepping up to the plate in offering to work with Central American nations on curbing the drug trade.

President Obama, very popular in Latin America, with a 62 per cent approval rating in 2009 according to Gallup (he is now down to 47 per cent), had raised high expectations. In many ways, today's Latin America offers an ideal testing ground for the type of multilateralism many expected Mr. Obama would engage in, in marked contrast to the unilateralism of his predecessor. At least some of the perception of U.S. ‘declinism' so prevalent in much of the world after the fiasco of Iraq, the disaster of the U.S.-triggered Great Recession, and the looming defeat in Afghanistan, could be counteracted by working hand in hand with its Western Hemisphere neighbours, at a time when Latin America is undergoing a veritable renaissance.

No final communiqué

Yet, the Sixth Summit of the Americas was a fiasco. There was no final communiqué, a minimum threshold to measure any such meeting's success. The biggest news to come out of the summit concerned the shenanigans of U.S. Secret Service agents, which came to light because they did not pay for services solicited (there is a metaphor here for the state of U.S.-Latin American relations, for all those who want to see it). Moreover, Washington can hardly allege that any emerging summit consensus was blocked by Latin America's leftist leaders: Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua were not in attendance. President Raul Castro of Cuba was banned from doing so, which became part of the problem. The issue of Cuba's exclusion was not the only one standing in the way. That of the Falklands/Malvinas was another, pitting the English-speaking North versus the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking South. The Panamerican idea has been tested and found wanting.

The paradox is only too apparent. The BRICS summit, dismissed by some as a mere talk-shop with no basis in common interests, is going from strength to strength. The Summit of the Americas, representing the largest gathering of market democracies anywhere, led by the world's leading power, is on its last throes, and may not reconvene again. That this takes place a scarce 30 months after the Honduras crisis should have taught Washington the lesson that Latin American political cooperation and collective diplomacy is alive and well, and that the region will no longer let herself be kicked around for the sake of satisfying Washington's parochial domestic preoccupations.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article3347193.ece

U.S. and India

Multilateralism is a game the U.S. and India can play

The promising U.S.-India partnership that New Delhi and Washington have fostered over more than a decade has sometimes seemed less apparent in the two nations' relationship at the United Nations. Rather, multilateral diplomacy has often highlighted the diverging, not the converging, world views of India and the United States. President Barack Obama's dramatic announcement in New Delhi in November 2010 that the U.S. supports India as an eventual permanent member of the Security Council was a crucial step, but did not of itself narrow the gap between the two in New York. However, there are recent encouraging signs of more convergence; these need to be built upon carefully by both sides to forge a more enduring partnership.

Voting record

The U.S. keeps statistics on coincidence of voting in the General Assembly, and India — like many other countries in the G-77 group — gets low marks on certain issues of high importance to the U.S., especially on Israel and the Middle East, human rights reports, and the embargo on Cuba. In 2010 and 2011, India voted similarly to the U.S. on about 25 and 33 per cent of all recorded votes in the General Assembly, respectively. When the more common consensus votes are included, the U.S. and India are together 85 per cent of the time. During India's current tenure as a rotating, non-permanent member of the Security Council (since January 2011), the two countries' differing perspectives have sometimes been in sharp focus. From a U.S. perspective, India identified itself more with two other contenders for permanent membership — Brazil and South Africa — and, even more troublesome for the U.S., seemed to vote with Russia and China over the U.S./Britain/France bloc on contentious votes. India, like Russia and China, abstained on the March 2010 resolution authorising a no-fly zone over Libya and, like them, believed that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) exceeded the Council's mandate in the following months.

On Syria, though, the record has been mixed. When members of the Council in January 2012 sought to condemn the Syrian regime's attack on its domestic opposition, India pursued the middle ground of abstention and watched Russia and China veto the effort. India then worked to find a compromise, supporting a resolution in early February that, while ruling out foreign military intervention, aligned itself with the West and the Arab League; even that fell to Chinese and Russian vetoes.

Four points of view

The U.S. and India need to work together intensively at the U.N., befitting the “strategic partnership” the two countries are forging. They are already doing so in the Security Council on issues ranging from counterterrorism to anti-piracy policy, to Afghanistan. Improving cooperation on other issues should be achievable, but it will require some creative thinking by both sides, and a willingness to take each other's views into account.

First, the U.S. needs to acknowledge the importance to India of its “strategic autonomy.” The U.S. and India will always have different interests reflecting their geographic, economic, and strategic realities. This will translate into different voting patterns. India wants to hear why it is in its own interest to vote with the Western “bloc.”

Second, the U.S. and India need to communicate regularly in New York. “No surprises” should be the rule. The practice of the Security Council's five permanent members to consult among themselves can mean decisions are made before an issue is discussed with other members of the Council.

Third, multilateral topics should be on the table when our leaders meet in New Delhi and Washington. This June's third meeting of the U.S.-India “Strategic Dialogue,” led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and India's External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna, offers an early opportunity to do just that.

Finally, the U.S. and India need to consult more closely on Security Council reform — and not just because the U.S. now supports India's bid for permanent membership.

An expanded Council needs to be large enough to be more representative, but small enough to do business. India, the U.S. and the U.N. would all gain from this outcome.

That said, the U.S. and India both need to take a pragmatic view of Security Council reform. The odds are against this rising to the top of the U.N.'s agenda any time soon. This is no reflection on India. Rather, it is a realisation that Security Council expansion is a Pandora's box that many countries would prefer to keep closed for now. Among the many unresolved issues: China's opposition to Japan's entry as a permanent member, Africa's demand for two permanent seats, dramatic over-representation of Europe if Germany were to achieve its goal of permanent membership, and the role of the veto.

But delay for India certainly does not mean never. As the recently released Non-Alignment 2.0 study by eight Indian foreign policy analysts rightly points out: “India should recognise that time is on its side in this matter. As the structure of global power shifts, India's case inevitably becomes stronger. But India will also, in the interim, have to demonstrate a leadership capacity to propose solutions to and artfully handle some of the difficult challenges facing the world.”

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article3347198.ece

Hunger and PDS

India is a hungry country. The Food and Agriculture Organisation Report on Hunger 2006 pegs the number of malnourished in India at 212 million and estimates that between 20 and 34 per cent of our population is malnourished. Despite the implementation of the Public Distribution System for several decades and Targeted PDS for the last one-and-a-half decades, it is estimated that more than 50 per cent of the children in rural areas suffer from malnourishment; with 21 per cent suffering from severe malnutrition. The irony is that these dismal facts and statistics coexist with record production of foodgrains. So, why is it that there is such deprivation amidst such plenty?

Green Revolution

More than 65 per cent of the Indian landmass is semi-arid. The agriculture that evolved under these regions is adapted to low rainfall and poor soils. The agricultural systems here are characterised by the practice of mixed farming. Whether it is the Saat Dhaan of Rajasthan or theBaraah Anaaj system of Uttarakhand or the Pannendu Pantalu system of Andhra Pradesh, one sees a multitude of crops being cultivated; and such systems ensure the survival of rural communities, even under the harshest of conditions.

The Green Revolution brought about fundamental changes in the paradigm of Indian agriculture. It offered purely technical solutions to the food crisis that was prevailing. Improved, high-yielding and hybrid seeds were introduced; farmers were pushed to use chemical pesticides and fertilizers; mono-cropping was introduced; all with an intention to augment food production; and augment it did. One cannot dispute the fact that the Green Revolution resulted in an increase in the production of certain foodgrains; and it did lead to the prosperity of farmers in certain pockets of the country. But in the long run, the policies pursued under the Green Revolution greatly undermined Indian agriculture.

Rural communities lost control over the seeds they were sowing in their lands, and became dependent on traders and extension services for most of the agricultural inputs; the progressively high doses of pesticides and fertilizers led to poisoned soils; the cost of cultivation shot up; agricultural bio-diversity was decimated, with several endemic land-races completely disappearing; and nutritional deficiencies got further accentuated, especially in rural India. All these factors together precipitated an agrarian crisis that saw more than 200,000 farmers, mostly in arid and semi-arid regions, committing suicide.

A closer look at existing PDS

PDS was created with an intention to provide the people of India — the poor especially needed to lead a dignified life. Analyses have indicated that rice, wheat and sugar account for 75 per cent of all items purchased from PDS outlets in rural areas. The vast majority of the rural population depends on cereals for most of the calorific and nutritional requirements — 68 per cent of the calorific needs and 67 per cent of the protein needs of the rural population are met through cereals alone. And yet, there has been an overall decline in both calorific intake as well as protein intake especially among the poor. This clearly points to the poor quality of cereals that are being consumed by the rural populace (NSSO data indicate that PDS rice and wheat are inferior to millets and endemic foodgrains in terms of nutritional content). This also indicates that the decimation of mixed farming systems that comprised a variety of crops undermined the nutritional intake of the rural households. Since nutritional needs could not be met from within their villages and lands, rural households were compelled to meet them from markets; with the result, more than 55 per cent of the monthly per capita expenditure incurred by rural households is towards food. This is where the current PDS has fallen short.

In the PDS as it exists today, large quantities of grains are procured from one part of the country, stored in warehouses, and moved to other parts. Despite spending millions on these processes, we have not succeeded in reaching every nook of India; nor have we been able to curb corruption that has become endemic to this system.

Finally, the availability of cheap rice and wheat at PDS outlets has dissuaded many a rural household from trying cuisine that evolved out of the environmental and socio-economic conditions in a given area. These local cuisines were cost-effective, used local ingredients thus minimising the need to depend on external sources, and were designed to meet the nutritional needs of people in the most effective way.

In the light of these arguments, we advocate the need for decentralising the PDS. The decentralised Public Distribution System is PDS reimagined; one that is democratic and involves rural communities at every stage of planning and implementation.

The concept of decentralised PDS rests on the principles of localised procurement, storage and distribution. The emphasis is on the participation of people — especially the marginalised and women — and on a holistic approach that integrates biodiversity, natural resource management, rural livelihoods and empowerment. The inclusion of local knowledge and expertise at every stage would make such a PDS truly participatory. Such a PDS would focus on the food crops that are locally produced. In some locations this might be millets, while in others it might be endemic varieties of rice and wheat. Being made a part of PDS would enhance the demand for these foodgrains and augment their production, thus reviving traditional agricultural practices. The storage of these grains would also be undertaken by the local communities, at village or panchayat level, thus reducing storage and transport costs, and generating employment for a few rural households.

Revival of traditional systems

The revival of traditional agricultural systems would mean that a diverse range of cereals, pulses, oilseeds and vegetables would be available close on hand to the rural communities. The combination of such crops would ensure that the nutritional needs of the communities are locally met at a reasonable price. This is likely to enable rural households to spend less on food and use the money thus saved for other purposes. The fact that such systems are hardy and do not need pesticides and fertilizers would also help farmers to bring down the cost of agriculture. Further, the in-built risk-mitigation properties of such agricultural systems enhance the capacities of rural households to cope with the phenomenon of climate change.

Together, these benefits would enhance incomes and savings of rural households, and strengthen the rural economy; and hold the potential to decrease distress migration. Further, decentralised PDS and reviving the traditional systems would restore women's place in the drivers' seat, as far as the production and distribution of the foodgrains are concerned; give them an opportunity to develop entrepreneurial and organisational skills and break stereotypical gender roles in relation to division of labour in agriculture.

Thus, a decentralised PDS not only ensures that the rural communities have access to adequate food and nutrition, but also empowers them to seek that nutrition in their midst. It places the control over food and farming back into the hands of the rural populace and re-establishes the prominent role of women in agriculture; not to mention the prominent ecological and economic costs that would be accrued by the communities.

Food Security Bill & PDS

The National Food Security Bill that has been tabled in Parliament seeks to enhance the food security of the poor, but provides for measures that are grossly inadequate. Many RtF activists, including the Deccan Development Society (DDS), have been demanding the inclusion of millets and the implementation of a decentralised PDS. However, the Bill accepts only the former. Considering the small quantities of millets that are presently produced (18 million tonnes), handling them centrally would be unviable in the long run. Further, a centralised PDS would sideline local knowledge and food cultures and thereby undermine the well-being of the rural masses. Therefore, for long-term food sovereignty of India and for the nutritional security of its rural communities, it is absolutely vital that a decentralised PDS be made part of NFSB and vigorously implemented.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article3255934.ece