Deadly Fire Exposes Laziness in the Media

Byoliveridley

Deadly Fire Exposes Old Perils in New India – New York Times

The fire in this bustling but entirely provincial city, roughly 50 miles northeast of the capital, New Delhi, is now seen as an example of the painful paradox of India’s economic miracle. The hunger for brand-name goods — a Toshiba television, a Whirlpool washing machine, an LG air-conditioning unit — has spread to middle India. But that hunger has only exposed the raw and yawning gaps that remain: a disregard for health and safety measures in many places, combined with a deep public suspicion that corrupt officials turn a blind eye to the need to enforce standards in these areas.

Please, I know that this is the standard article frame, the “painful paradox of (insert country’s name here)’s Economic Miracle”. One has seen a million stories about “developing countries” like these with the word “paradox” thrown in. Of course, the writer makes no attempt to find even one person or reference that calls this a “paradox”. But why is this a paradox? Is this not the rule, the true paradox is when economic development, government efficiency, population attitudes, literacy, and all those other indicators of a country’s state of being go hand in hand. As in, a GDP increase of 10% brings a 10% increase in government efficiency, what a terrible media frame.

Fires, stampedes, bus accidents, plagues, you name it, easily avoidable deaths happen all the time all over India. They have nothing to do with anything other than the combination of poor enforcement, poor crowd control, over population and systems that don’t work. These things were happening when I was growing up in the 1970s and they will happen for the forseeable future. How surprising is it that it is easier to manufacture a few million washing machines than to change a country’s attitudes and performance.

Governance is more difficult than making money, and requires the money to have been in the system for a few years. Good governance also requires higher expectations, and higher expectations come with the higher standard of living that the injection of money brings. So, no paradox, just the natural order of things: Money – Expectations – Governance.

Morons!

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    The most important thing I read today (Indian Agriculture Edition)

    Byoliveridley

    Yes, I read the Times article about this subject too, but Tom Philpott and P. Sainath writer better and more eloquently.

    India, food, and modernization | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist

    That “promising biotechnology” is Monsanto’s Bt cotton seed, genetically modified to ward off the cotton bollworm. Indian farmers have been desperate to get their hands on it because they think they need it to compete with their lavishly capitalized and subsidized U.S. peers.

    But the Monsanto seed, which promises to enable farmers to use 25 percent less pesticide, might not be worth the premium (it goes for about twice as much as conventional seed, the Times reports). The great Indian journalist P. Sainath wrote recently that “despite all the claims made for [Bt cotton], input dealers here have seen no decline in pesticide sales as a result of its use. Some claim higher sales than before.”

    As prices for seeds and other inputs rise, farmers have seen the price their goods fetch in the marketplace fall or stagnate. The result has been crushing debt burdens, mounting losses, and a stunning surge in suicides among farmers.

    The Times reports that “17,107 farmers committed suicide in 2003, the most recent year for which government figures are available. Anecdotal reports suggest that the high rates are continuing.”

    Well, that’s one way to clear the land of “inefficient” farmers.

    For the enduring scam that is BT cotton, read this.

  • Bomb blasts kill 30 in Hyderabad

    Byoliveridley

    Happens too depressingly often in India. There’s just too many people around, it’s very easy to hide,  counter-surveillance by police/intelligence agencies is lacking. Hopefully, it won’t ignite any  more violence, which is all the terrorists are hoping to do.

    Over 32 killed as terror strikes Hyderabad-India-The Times of India

    In two near-simultaneous terror attacks, at least 32 people were killed and 35 injured in two explosions at a crowded park and a popular eating joint here on Sunday evening, three months after the Mecca Masjid blasts.

    Twenty six people died and 22 wounded when an explosion ripped through Gokul Chat Shop at Kothi locality at around 7.30 pm, Andhra Pradesh Home Minister K Jana Reddy told reporters here.

    Six people, most of them from outside the state, were killed and 13 injured in another blast five minutes earlier in an open air auditorium in Lumbini Park near the state secretariat in the heart of the city when a laser show was on, he said.

    The condition of ten to 15 people in different hospitals of the city was stated to be serious.

    Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and Police Commissioner Balwinder Singh, who both visited the blast sites, said it appeared to be a terrorist act.

    A red alert was sounded across the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad and neighbouring Karnataka and the national capital Delhi in the wake of the blasts.

    Senior police and central intelligence officials indicated that the explosives used in today’s well-planned blasts were similar to those employed in Mecca Masjid explosions which claimed 11 lives in May this year.

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    Brazil proposes G5 summit

    Byoliveridley

    interesting news that India, China, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa decide that they no longer need to be invited to the (not so) G(r)8 meeting to talk to each other. This is a welcome development in many ways, may they keep talking.

    The Hindu : Front Page : Brazil proposes G5 summit

    Though largely overshadowed by the brief “pull aside” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had with U.S. President George W. Bush, the most significant aspect of last week’s G8 meetings was the new dialectic that emerged among the five countries which were invited to Germany as “outreach” partners.

    At a meeting of the five — Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa — Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva took the lead in proposing that the group consider getting together again at a forum other than that of the G8 so that its own meetings are no longer incidental to the meetings and agenda of the eight most industrialised countries.

    The proposal was welcomed by the other leaders, say Indian officials familiar with the June 7 deliberations of the “outreach,” or O-5, in Berlin. China’s President Hu Jintao noted that the five countries together accounted for 42 per cent of the world’s population and Dr. Singh quoted an old statement of Jawaharlal Nehru that developing countries were partners and not petitioners before the chanceries of the world.

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    India at 60 – A Public Health Perspective

    Byoliveridley

    Well, at least I don’t have to take part in endless parades and listen to speeches any more. But India turned 60 today, and the head of the Indian public health foundation takes stock, and it is sobering.

    The Hindu : Persisting public health challenges

    Recent health indicators in India are a cause for both celebration and concern. While life expectancy at birth has risen to 63 years, infant mortality rate (IMR) and maternal mortality rate (MMR) are still at unacceptably high levels (57 per 1000 and 301 per 100,000 live births respectively). There is widespread disparity among States with Kerala being the star performer. Within States, the rural areas are way behind the urban segments. Even as our economy has grown rapidly, the nutritional status of children has remained stunted, suggesting that wide income disparities are preventing the poor from becoming the beneficiaries of growth.

    Yes, I be the killjoy.

    More from Amartya Sen

    There is reason enough to celebrate many things happening in India right now. But there are failures as well, which need urgent attention. For example, there is still widespread undernourishment in general and child undernutrition in particular–at a shocking level. The failures include, quite notably, the astonishing neglect of elementary education in India, with a quarter of the population–and indeed half the women–still illiterate.

    The average life expectancy in India is still low (below 64) and infant mortality very high (58 per 1,000 live births). It is certainly true that India has narrowed the shortfall behind China in these areas–that is, in life expectancy and infant mortality–but there is still some distance to go for the country as a whole. The problems are gigantic in some of the more “backward” states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. And yet there are other states in which the Indian numbers are similar to China’s.

    he goes on…

    If India has to overcome these failures, it has to spend much more money on expanding the social infrastructure, particularly school education and basic health care. It also needs to spend much more in building up a larger physical infrastructure, including more roads, more power supplies and more water. In some of these, the private sector can help. But a lot more has to be spent on public services themselves, in addition to improving the system of delivery of these services, with more attention paid to incentives and disciplines, and better cooperation with the unions, consumer groups and other involved parties.

    Ah, basic and boring infrastructure building!

  • Harry Potter copyright update

    Byoliveridley

    Turns out that the Delhi High Court does not share Penguin’s expansive view of copyrights.

    Organisers of the ‘Potter pandal’ in Salt Lake’s FD Block heaved a sigh of relief on Friday when Delhi High Court dismissed Penguin India’s complaint of copyright violation.

    The puja committee is free to go ahead with the pandal, which resembles Hogwarts school, the setting for JK Rowling’s magical Harry Potter series.

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    Sunita Narain on the Tata Nano

    Byoliveridley

    nano.jpg Unless you have been living under a rock recently (hey, nice way to start a blog post, insult your reader(s)), you must have heard of the Tata Nano, the much ballyhooed cheapest car ever built. People ask me (after all, I am Indian and pretend to know a lot about the environment) what I think of the Nano. Well, it’s hard to summarize in an elevator pitch. Obviously, given the state of public transportation in the cities, people want private vehicles to travel in, more convenient, fewer people to jostle against, etc. People previously riding scooters and motorcycles (and carrying entire families in a two wheeler) would prefer this car. But, traffic’s going to get worse, and cars occupy a lot of road space while not carrying that many people.

    Anyway, my thoughts aside, Sunita Narain (one of India’s most famous environmental activists) and director of  The Center for Science and Environment (India’s most active Environmental NGO) writes one of her typically insightful editorials in Down to Earth, the CSE’s flagship publication.

    Let’s take the ‘affordability’ question first. The fact is that cars—small or big—are heavily subsidized. The problem is that when economists (including those who run the government) fret and fume about mounting subsidy bills, they think of farmers—fertilizer, electricity and food—not our cars. But subsidy is what they unquestionably get.The subsidy begins with the manufacture of cars. When we read about the Singur farmers’ struggle to stop government from acquiring their land for the Tata car factory we don’t join the dots. We don’t see this as the first big subsidy to motorization. The fact is, in Singur the manufacturer got cheap land, interest-free capital and perhaps other concessions—the Left Front government in West Bengal never made public full details of its attractive package. This brought down the cost of production and allowed the manufacturer to price the Nano at Rs 1 lakh

    The Nano-flyover syndrome | Editor’s Page | Down To Earth magazine

    All very true. Cars are heavily subsidized, taxation, parking, you name it, money quote…

    Since cars take up over 75 per cent of the road space, even though they move less than 20 per cent of the people, it is obvious whom this expenditure benefits the most.

    Yes, cars are not a very efficient way to move people, they’re convenient because Indian cities are not being planned to prioritize public transport that is convenient, safe and clean. India’s  per capita income (nominal) is about a $1000 per year and the nano, even in its cheapest form, is about 3 years worth of the average income. So, your average Indian, even if she lives in a city and makes twice this average, will not buy this car. So, she’s stuck on the bus which crawls ever so slowly due to all these nanos flitting about. Or, she’s on a scooter/bike facing ever increasing pollution due to these cars and risking life and limb as traffic pushes vehicles closer and closer together.

    But of course, this seems to be the pattern of development and optimists will argue that at some point in time, the infrastructure will catch up to the point that there will be room for all these cars and money for all the people to buy all these cars. But as Ms. Narain points out, 20% of Delhi is already covered with roads (hard to get that number in context though, I have no idea what percent of NYC is road covered, for instance!), so finding room to build more roads is going to be hard.

    Something’s gotta give, I don’t know what!

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