Only way to improve english is by reading it from all anglesHi all,
Only way to improve english is by reading it from all angles
India’s politicians seem unable to resist the temptation to politicise terror acts. Soon after Wednesday’s bomb blast near the office of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Bangalore, Congress spokesperson Shakeel Ahmad tweeted his concern that the terror attack would benefit the BJP in the upcoming Karnataka Assembly election. For a senior politician to think of the possible political benefit or cost of a bomb blast, and not of the innocent victims, is shocking in itself. Worse, he showed no sense of remorse for his insensitivity and lack of political judgment even after his party disowned the remark. Congress spokesperson Janardhan Dwivedi sought to limit the damage by cautioning against framing terror issues in terms of profit and loss, and on behalf of the government, Union Minister of State for Home R.P.N. Singh warned against extracting political capital out of the blast, but Mr. Ahmad was adamant. By way of explaining his line of thinking, the Congress leader referred to a statement by the Karnataka Home Minister R. Ashok that the attack was a terrorist activity targeted at BJP workers. Evidently, calculations of political gain and loss had so blinded Mr. Ahmad that he was unable to see the thoughtless and tactless nature of his own remarks.
With spokespersons like these in the Congress, the BJP needs to say or do precious little in the run-up to the Assembly election. At a time when the BJP was entirely on the defensive after five years of non-performance in Karnataka, this self goal from the Congress must have given it a measure of relief. On their part, the BJP and other opposition parties have also tended to use terrorist incidents as an excuse to pillory the government, citing them as evidence of the Congress’s mismanagement of national affairs. On the whole, the tendency of Indian politicians to try and score political points in such situations stands in stark contrast to the attitude of the political class in the United States. There, in the aftermath of the recent Boston bombing or the earlier terror strikes of 9/11, one has seen none of the tiresome grandstanding that accompanies a terrorist incident. Despite the sharp political divisions which exist on most issues in the U.S. — or indeed in the United Kingdom, which has also experienced terrible attacks — terror is seen as a common threat, a national challenge that requires and demands a unified response. Political parties close ranks during terror attacks and refrain from making divisive and sectarian remarks. Our politicians must learn to wield power and responsibility well, and to be a calming influence at a time when people are feeling vulnerable.
18th April 2013 - The Hindu.
Understand the article.
Find the meaning of the words which you don't understand.
Finally,suggest a title. The original title is perfect so let's see how close you get 
Last month’s coup d’état in the Central African Republic (CAR), in which the northern-based group Séléka fought its way into the capital Bangui and overthrew President François Bozizé, is yet another destabilising development in a country which has had a troubled and violent modern history. The coup resulted from the collapse of a January 11 agreement, which was itself meant to end fighting that had broken out late in 2012 over the alleged failure of a 2007 peace deal. Mr. Bozizé, who had seized power in a coup in 2003 but won elections in 2005 and 2011, has reportedly escaped to neighbouring Congo. The five-faction Séléka, which means “alliance” in Songo, is led by Michel Djotodia, who has suspended the constitution and announced rule by decree. Though he has promised that the 2016 elections will occur as planned, he also says he will review existing deals with foreign mining firms. In response, the African Union has suspended the CAR and imposed travel restrictions on Séléka leaders. Unsurprisingly, the country faces a humanitarian crisis. Some 40,000 people have fled to Congo, Chad, and Cameroon; even a fortnight before the coup, the fighting had displaced 175,000 people internally, and violent looting continues apparently unchecked.
Things do not bode well for the country’s 4.5 million people. Though Mr. Djotodia, who heads the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (UFDR) faction within Séléka, claims to be a secularist, some among the majority Christian population are nervous because he is a Muslim. However, his earlier record in getting himself appointed to replace a sheikh as the CAR’s consul in Nyala, capital of the Sudanese state of Darfur, suggests that he puts his own ends first. A more serious problem, however, is Séléka’s use of child soldiers. Members of a South African force which tried to defend the Bozizé government say they were sickened to find children among those they had killed; they themselves lost 13 troops in a serious foreign policy disaster for President Jacob Zuma’s ANC government. A further complication is that the CAR’s Muslim minority, which mainly lives in the northeast, considers that it has long been neglected by successive governments in Bangui. As if that were not enough, Joseph Kony, the leader of the Uganda-based Lord’s Resistance Army, who is wanted for war crimes, has disappeared, with some of his forces, somewhere in the CAR, and U.S. troops assisting the Bozizé government in searching for him have abandoned the hunt since the coup. Although rich in resources, the CAR is one of the world’s poorest countries. But it seems the AU will get little international help while it tries to create stability and legitimate authority there.
The freedom to marry is a fundamental right that should not have to be
won or defended at the ballot box. In fact, ballot initiatives are a bad
way to write or rewrite laws of any kind. Unfortunately, that is the
reality of American politics, which is why same-sex marriage measures on
the Nov. 6 ballot in Maine, Washington, Maryland and Minnesota could
turn out to be pivotal in the struggle for marriage equality.
The Prime Minister is out of line in asserting that the Public Accounts Committee “will” challenge the findings of the CAG. It is akin to issuing a whip to the committee
When the draft provisions relating to the Comptroller and Auditor General were under consideration in the Constituent Assembly, Dr. B.R Ambedkar, Chairman of the Drafting Committee, said: “I am of the opinion that this dignitary or officer is probably the most important officer in the Constitution of India. He is the one man who is going to see that the expenses voted by Parliament are not exceeded, or varied from what has been laid down by Parliament in the Appropriation Act. If this functionary is to carry out the duties — and his duties, I submit, are far more important than the duties even of the Judiciary — he should have been certainly as independent as the Judiciary. But, comparing the Articles about the Supreme Court and those relating to the Auditor General, I cannot help saying that we have not given him the same independence which we have given to the Judiciary, although I personally feel that he ought to have far greater independence than the Judiciary itself” (May 30, 1949)
While laying the foundation stone of the CAG office building in New Delhi in July 1954, President Rajendra Prasad said: “… At the present moment when the Government is incurring a huge expenditure on so many welfare projects … it is essential that every rupee that we spend is properly accounted for. This important task — I am afraid, a task not always very pleasant — devolves upon the Comptroller and Auditor General and his office. In accordance with the powers vested in him, he has to carry on these functions without fear or favour in the larger interests of the nation.”
At a similar function in Madras in June 1954, Vice President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan stated: “Ours is a poor country, its resources are limited and we cannot afford to risk any kind of waste and the Audit and Accounts Department will have to look upon their functions as the functions of the greatest public utility ...” In conclusion, he asserted: “If I have one advice to give and if I am presumptuous enough to give any advice to the officers of the audit and accounts, it is this: ‘Do not shrink from the truth for fear of offending men in high places’.”
At the time President Prasad spoke about “huge expenditure of government projects,” the combined budgetary transactions of the Centre and the States were Rs.1,354 crore (1954-55). In 2010-2011, the total had zoomed to Rs.22, 92,510 crore according to the Economic Survey 2011-12.
When there was some criticism of the CAG’s reports in December 1952, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru chastised the Member: “He [the CAG] is not responsible to the Government and it is open for him to criticise the Government in reports. For him to be criticised on the floor of the House would tend to undermine the special position that has been granted to him to discharge his duties without fear or favour.”
Against the audit’s findings on deficiencies in defence preparedness on May 31, 1962, during the debate on Demands for Grants, Defence Minister Krishna Menon flared up: “Criticism offered by Audit to Parliament must be limited to financial question based on accounts. It is not the function of Auditor General to range over the field of administration and offer suggestion as to how the Government could be better conducted.” Immediately there were points of order and Speaker Sardar Hukam Singh pacified both sides. On June 18, the matter was again raised and the Speaker accepted the suggestion of the Finance Minister to seek elucidation from the Public Accounts Committee on the role of the CAG on the points raised.
In the 1950s and 1960s, with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru as its leader, the Congress had more than 70 per cent strength in both Houses, which naturally gave the ruling party a sufficient majority in all Committees, including the PAC. In 1962, the PAC chairman was Mahavir Tyagi, a senior Congress leader, bold and free in his views.
The PAC made an extensive study of the objectives and practices in the United Kingdom, and of explanations and documents offered by CAG A.K. Roy. Then, Tyagi submitted the PAC report with the following recommendations: “The Committee is definitely of the view that it is the function of the CAG to satisfy himself not only that every expenditure has been incurred as per prescribed rules, regulations and laws, but also that it has been incurred with ‘faithfulness, wisdom and economy.’ If, in the course of the audit, the CAG becomes aware of facts which appear to him to indicate an improper expenditure or waste of money, it is his duty to call the attention of Parliament to them through his Audit Reports. At the present time when there is heavy taxation and heavy expenditure, the Committee hopes that the CAG will pay even greater attention than in the past to this aspect of his duties and that the government will give him every facility to perform them.”
Four months later, in October 1962, the Chinese aggression on India proved the validity of the points raised in the Audit Report. The debacle forced Krishna Menon to resign.
Now scam after scam comes to be reported about the bewildering loss of public funds, counted in lakhs of crores. But at every revelation, the Manmohan Singh government, noted for its zero administrative capacity, maintains there is zero loss.
Can we expect the President and the Vice-President to follow in the footsteps of Rajendra Prasad and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and ask the CAG to carry on his functions “without fear or favour” or advise the Audit officers “not to shrink from truth for fear of offending men in high places?”
On August 27, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh submitted to both Houses his report refuting many points raised in the CAG Report on the allocation of coal blocks. I am not going to analyse the contents of the report.
I am horrified at the remarks he made to the media before going to the Lok Sabha with his report. His message to the media in Parliament House on August 27 was released by the Prime Minister’s Office. The fourth paragraph of the news release said: “I wish to assure the country that we have a very strong and credible case, the observations of the CAG are disputable, and they will be challenged when the matter comes before the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee.”
I am not concerned here with the Prime Minster’s affirmations about the strong case of the government or the disputable observations of the CAG. What I am strongly against is this sentence in his statement: “…they [observations of the CAG] will be challenged when the matter comes before the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee.”
How can the Prime Minister say now that the observations of the CAG ‘will’ be challenged when the matter comes before the PAC?
The PAC is set up by Parliament and its proceedings cannot be passed on to others until its report is submitted to Parliament. The Prime minister, however high his position, should not take the PAC for granted. He cannot issue a whip now that the observations of the CAG are to be challenged. He may as well abolish the entire Committee system.
When Hitler came to power in Germany, he proscribed all political parties excepting the Nazi Party; then he amended the law to end all forms of accountability through audit of finance. It is to be hoped that Manmohan Singh and his ministers are not trying to adopt this method to avoid struggling with the cumbersome parliamentary system of a functioning democracy.
(Era Sezhiyan is an eminent parliamentarian and author. He was chairman of the Public Accounts Committee from 1971 to 1973.)
Eleven weeks ago I wrote a column about my experience of becoming a dad. I also promised to never write another "parenthood" piece again, on the basis that prior to becoming a parent, the mere mention of babies in newsprint was guaranteed to make me vomit all over the page in protest, paying special attention to the author's byline photo.
I held true to that promise. Really I did. And then a few weeks later I wrote an article on becoming jaded with popular culture, in which I had the temerity to mention parenthood again. Briefly, and only in passing – but boy did some readers go for me in the comments section.
"Oh Brooker, you smug, simpering, self-satisfied, mimsy, middle-class, latte-sipping, fleece-wearing, washed-up, shark-jumping, progeny-spawning embarrassment. I remember way back when you used to be relevant. When you wrote those columns slagging off reality show contestants. Remember those rebellious glory days? You said Anton du Beke looks like a man who jizzes sherbet or something and it was hilarious. Now look at you. You've become everything you used to criticise – literally everything. AND you've grown your hair a bit: the ultimate betrayal*. You've let yourself down, but worse than that, you've let me down – me, your cherished reader: the single most important person in your life."
I hereby resign from whatever contest of cultural significance these keyboard-bothering nincompoops think they're conducting. The key point these wailing children fail to appreciate is that becoming less relevant is my inevitable destiny. It's their destiny too, but they're way too full of snot and pep to notice. The real tragedy is not that I'm doomed to fade, but that I'm doomed to fade just to make room for these pricks.
Well prick away, cocksure Sharpington Sharp, because one day, you'll be so irrelevant you'll actually stop breathing. Your body will decompose to a grey, pulpy mulch that will fertilise the soil the next generation will nonchalantly trample over on its way to the hologram shop. And that's how I picture you when I read your comments – as a shovelful-of-putrefied-matter-to-be making the very least of its brief window of consciousness. Under those circumstances, your level of snark merely strikes me as tragicomic.
All of which is a longwinded and possibly over-defensive way of saying I'm going to mention babies again. And again and again and again. Look, I'm mentioning them now: BABIES. I'll mention them as often as I like. In fact I might ask them to print this entire column in a special Winnie-the-Pooh font, with a photograph of a mobile, just to make it more offputting to the cool kids.
A common theme in the comments expressing dismay at my shameful acceptance of fatherhood is that people go all sappy when they have a baby; ergo, every word I wrote from this point on would be shot through with gooey, complacent sentiment. I don't understand that. I don't understand why everyone doesn't gain an additional nine layers of rage the nanosecond they become a parent. There's the sleep deprivation and the stress, of course, but that's largely offset by the underlying sense of delight that babies radioactively plant in their parents' heads in a cunning bid to stop them murdering them. It's the rest of the world that's the problem. When you're suddenly tasked with steering a defenceless, vulnerable creature through life, the state of the planet instantly feels like less of a wearying joke and more of an outrageous affront to human decency. The world has slightly sharper edges than before.
Still, it's probably best not to succumb to this over-protective mindset, in case you turn into Sting and accidentally write the anti-nuclear-holocaust song Russians. "How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer's deadly toy?" he sang, doubtless in the grip of new dadhood. "Believe me when I say to you, I hope the Russians love their children too." Nothing wrong with the sentiment, but no one ever danced to it at their wedding.
But I guess Sting wrote that because his son was precious to him. And I can relate to that now, just as I now understand why parents think their kids are unique and wonderful geniuses. It's simple: for the first six weeks or so, a baby is effectively little more than a screaming pet rock. It can't even hold its own head up, so any expectation you had regarding your child's abilities is instantly reset to zero. You get so accustomed to it doing nothing but yelling and defecating, the moment it does anything new – smiling or batting vaguely at an object – it's a miracle, like a chair has learned to tap-dance. How clever, you think, forgetting that "batting vaguely at an object" is hardly worth mentioning on a CV. All your baby has actually done – in geek terms – is receive the latest OS update, which fixes a few bugs (it goes cross-eyed less often), clears up some performance issues (it feeds more efficiently), and enables new features (object-batting now included).
Of course, everyone on the planet gets the same OS updates, at regular intervals, for their entire lives. Before long, he'll get the crawling update. The talking update. The walking update. And so on. Personally, I downloaded all of those years ago. I'm way ahead of the little idiot. Way ahead. I've already got the hair-greying update, and am hoping to collect the complete set of related physical "improvements", such as weaker eyesight and sagging flesh. Eventually, in a glorious climax, I guess I'll install and run the "afterlife" routine, encountering the inevitable fatal system error halfway through. Unless by then they've ironed out that final, unfortunate, inescapable glitch.
*Not that you'd know I'd grown my hair a bit from my obnoxious byline photo, which dates from 2006 and is a constant source of shame.
In the issue of his journal Young India dated April 27, 1921, Mahatma Gandhi published an article titled “Evil Wrought by the English Medium”. This argued that “Rammohun Roy would have been a greater reformer, and Lokmanya Tilak would have been a greater scholar, if they had not to start with the handicap of having to think in English and transmit their thoughts chiefly in English”. Gandhi claimed that “of all the superstitions that affect India, none is so great as that a knowledge of the English language is necessary for imbibing ideas of liberty, and developing accuracy of thought”.
When this article appeared, Rabindranath Tagore was travelling in the West. Posted a copy, he was dismayed by its general tenor, and by the chastisement of Rammohan Roy in particular. On May 10, 1921, he wrote to C.F. Andrews from Zurich saying, “I strongly protest against Mahatma Gandhi’s trying to cut down such great personalities of Modern India as Rammohan Roy in his blind zeal for crying down our modern education”. These criticisms, added Tagore tellingly, showed that Gandhi “is growing enamoured of his own doctrines — a dangerous form of egotism, that even great people suffer from at times”.
The Mahatma believed Rammohan Roy was limited by his excessive familiarity with English. To the contrary, Tagore argued that through his engagement with other languages, the reformer “had the comprehensiveness of mind to be able to realise the fundamental unity of spirit in the Hindu, Muhammadan and Christian cultures. Therefore he represented India in the fullness of truth, and this truth is based, not upon rejection, but on perfect comprehension. Rammohan Roy could be perfectly natural in his acceptance of the West, not only because his education had been perfectly Eastern — he had the full inheritance of the Indian wisdom. He was never a school boy of the West, and therefore he had the dignity to be the friend of the West”.
questions:
1. "Gandhi is growing enamoured of his own doctrines"what does the author mean by this?
2."He represented India in the fullness of truth, and this truth is based, not upon rejection"
Here rejection of what is being talked about by the author?
P.S:http://www.hindu.com/mag/2008/09/28/stories/2008092850090300.htm
SURGERY is an appealingly radical way of dealing with a diseased organ, but it can have a damaging effect on the rest of the body. That’s one reason why separating the investment and commercial wings of large “universal” banks is the wrong way of going about protecting taxpayers from reckless bankers.
The debate about splitting up universal banks has been rumbling since the start of the crisis, when behemoths such as Citigroup and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) nearly collapsed, but has reignited recently. Sandy Weill was the man who stitched Citigroup together in the 1990s and in the process helped bury the Glass-Steagall act, a Depression-era law separating retail and investment banking. Last month he performed a perfect pivot: he now wants regulators to undo his previous work. The idea is also on European minds. Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, says he would “not exclude” a division of this kind. And Vince Cable, Britain’s business secretary, fancies carving up RBS.
Bashers of universal banks have three sticks with which to beat them. The first is based on the idea that there something rotten about investment banking, a cultural miasma that infects the “good” bits of the banks where companies and individuals get loans and place deposits. The second is that they are a threat to financial stability, because universal banks tend to be bigger and more complex than more focused peers. And the third is that universal banks are a dreadful deal for investors. Mr Weill’s former bank has lost 94% of its value in the past five years; RBS is down by a regal 96%.
None of these criticisms, however, would justify a full-scale break-up. The idea that all finance’s problems stem from the investment-banking “casino” is a misdiagnosis. At its heart the crisis was a problem of too much debt, much of it secured against property. It is true that the wholesale markets played an important role in the build-up of this debt, but it was propelled by bad lending to individuals and developers from retail and commercial banks. And with these credit channels now blocked up, investment-banking activities such as helping companies to issue debt and equity are a crucial way of channelling savings to businesses with good ideas.
The stability argument is dubious, too. Because they are diversified, universal banks spread their risks. During the crisis, for example, banks such as JPMorgan Chase saw a sudden slump in investment banking offset by their retail-banking income, and vice versa. Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns had no such hedge—and imploded. Many firms are now choosing to issue bonds rather than take out bank loans. This means pure retail banks lose out, but those with wholesale arms boost profits by taking firms to the bond market.
The notion that universal banks are worse for shareholders than other banks is also open to question. Poorly as they have performed, they are grabbing market share from pure investment banks in areas such as bonds, currencies and commodities . Finally, though it is easy to call for banks to be carved up, it would be hellishly difficult in practice. Disentangling which shareholders and bondholders should own which bit of a divided bank would be a nightmare.
Better medicine
Change is certainly needed to protect taxpayers from having again to fork out billions to save the banking system from the consequences of its own mistakes. The very size of universal banks makes them dangerous, for they know the state will bail them out if things go bad. But most are so large that simply slicing them in two would not solve the problem. The effect of splitting up banks like Citigroup, RBS and Deutsche Bank, all of which have assets well over $1 trillion, would be to create six systemically important banks instead of three.
More effective medicine is already on offer. The British government is set to adopt the recommendations of an independent commission in Britain, which include the adoption of a “ring fence” that would force the retail and investment-banking arms of universal banks to have their own capital buffers, shielding depositors from losses in the investment bank but retaining some diversification benefits. Add in new rules requiring all types of banks to hold more capital, and (crucially) efforts to impose losses on private creditors of a failing institution, and the case for radical surgery is blunted.
Source - economist
Someone please explain this article to me, if possible. Economics gives me a tough time. :(
Read for the day.. (How safe are we in the hands of Indian Railways !!)
The Indian Railways has been found remiss again. A deadly fire caused apparently by a short-circuit in a sleeper bogie of the Tamil Nadu Express as it hurtled through the night, spells more bad news for a railway network that is already plagued by a poor safety record. Negligent standards of electrical maintenance are what initial assessments point to. The Indian Railways’ manuals on fire safety have quite a detailed elaboration of the type of safeguards needed to counter fire accidents including those caused by electrical malfunctions. In fact, in the context of the Nellore accident, almost every one of the guidelines could form part of a checklist to assess the level of seriousness with which the Railways takes its duties and responsibilities on this front. Have there been periodic inspections to ensure that the rolling stock involved was protected against the risk of fire? Was availability of fire-fighting equipment on board ensured? Were staff trained to fight fires, and were any fire-fighting devices properly maintained? The list can go on. This is the fourth fire accident in the Indian Railways in the last two years. Given the number of fires that have hit the system over the years with devastating effect, one basic question remains: why aren’t fire extinguishers, secured suitably if needed, provided inside all bogies? Why isn’t smoke detection equipment installed in each bogie, aligned with sprinkler and other suitable dousing systems? Significantly, in the absence of such a built-in system to alert the train crew, it took a railway worker who watched the train pass to raise the alarm. It was following this that the train was stopped and the burning bogie detached to prevent the blaze from spreading. If the Railways hasn’t found it worth its while to go in for such safeguards on all its trains, now is surely the time to do so.
Modernisation is the mantra of the Railways but surely basic issues of safety in the current system need to be addressed immediately. Even the ambitious plan submitted earlier this year by the Expert Group for the modernisation of Indian Railways, that requires Rs.560,000 crore over the next five years, did not seem to have focussed adequately on the safety aspect. The need for modernisation and a technological upgrade of the system cannot be over-emphasised. But during that quest, safety should take a front seat. From engine and bogie redesign and retrofitting to organisational culture and training, the Indian Railways has to devise foolproof ways of dealing with fires and collisions — the prime causes of accidental death on the tracks. The safety of passengers cannot be an afterthought, a detail that comes at the end of a checklist.
Source - http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article3704435.ece
Big emerging economies like China, India, Brazil and a few others underpinned the global economy during the worst phase of the recent crisis and spearheaded growth in the recovery phase. Their role in picking up the slack has been highlighted by global financial institutions, including the IMF and the World Bank. Well into the recovery, albeit an anaemic one, they continue to be ahead of the developed countries in terms of economic growth. However, there is one big difference. A decade or so of frenetic growth has ended, probably for good. Investors who bet heavily that extraordinary returns from emerging markets were the new normal are having second thoughts. Recent economic news reports are hardly flattering. China posted its lowest growth in three years. India’s recent GDP growth has been the lowest since 2004. Brazil’s economy has virtually stalled. The IMF in a recent publication has cut the growth forecast for three of the four BRIC countries for the current year. Pointing out that the growth slowdown in the emerging markets has been a bit more severe than expected, the IMF revised the forecast for China down from 8.2 to 8 per cent, for India from 6.9 to 6.1 per cent and for Brazil from 3.0 to 2.5 per cent. Low exports and low investment are the proximate causes for the deceleration, although quite obviously there is variation across countries.
The IMF, among others, expects the big emerging economies to have a soft landing, but at lower growth rates. The challenges from now on will be varied and different for each of them. Can India expand at 8 per cent levels while simultaneously taking care of its high fiscal and current account deficits and persistently high inflation? China is planning a shift away from investment-driven growth to a more sustainable one driven by consumption, even if that means a lower GDP growth rate. Brazil, an important commodities exporter, has welcomed the recent depreciation of its currency, the real, quite in contrast to the reactions that have greeted the rupee’s recent fall. Russia will have to reduce its overdependence on oil and gas. While no uniform prescriptions for either the emerging economies or for that matter the developed ones are possible, it is time again to re-emphasise the mutual interdependence of all countries. The festering euro crisis is a global problem and a fair resolution will benefit even countries outside the eurozone. A stronger U.S. economy will stimulate world trade. The financial markets have already discredited the “decoupling” theory, which held that emerging markets can grow independent of negative influences from the West.
Often enough in much of Assam, all that it takes to set alight the sub-surface nodes of volatility is a mere spark. Now, an ethnic-communal spectre looms over the western parts of the State once again. Confronting each other are violent elements among the Bodos and Muslims. Gang violence that started in Kokrajhar spread to more districts including Chirang, Dhubri and Bongaigaon, claiming some 40 lives. The rioting and torching has triggered an exodus. Over 1,70,000 people belonging to both the affected communities, as well as others, in the four districts have taken shelter in relief camps. The trigger was the firing on two student leaders of the All Bodoland Minority Students’ Union and the All Assam Minority Students’ Union in Kokrajhar. Thereupon, four former Bodo Liberation Tigers cadres were killed; that led to further attacks and counter-attacks. With the Bodos’ nationalistic assertion forming the historical backdrop to the tensions, aggressive elements from the two communities have clashed sporadically. The confrontation has been labelled ‘ethnic,’ but economic and even educational anxieties are as much at work as the desire to preserve socio-cultural and ethnic identities. Insecurities relating to land, forest rights and a shrinking job market have created a combustible mix.
The immediate task is to contain the violence and tackle the serious humanitarian crisis. Those who have had to abandon home and hearth should be enabled to return. Transport links with the rest of the country need to be restored; thousands of passengers remain stranded in railway and bus stations. Talks between the adversary organisations should be quickly facilitated. The administration failed to react quickly after the first signs of trouble on July 19. Considering that there was a build-up of tensions over the past few months, vulnerable areas ought to have been identified and adequate forces deployed. It has been pointed out that in many of the places overrun by violence, the security forces were not visible at all. The deployment of the Army seems to have come too late in the day. The mapping of stress-spots on the basis of adequate intelligence inputs should be a priority at least from now. The long-term goal, obviously, is to re-envision Assam as a place where ascriptive identities do not disrupt civic relationships. The state needs to keep working on achieving the right balance of development activity. The key to this will be restoration of mutual trust. This should be based primarily on systematic measures to address fears over loss of ownership and right to land, and concerns over denial of access to resources, development, and means of livelihood.
Ever since a midnight shooting at a movie theater in Colorado left 12 people dead and 58 wounded a little over a week ago, conversations have focused on gun laws and violence. Often overlooked in those discussions, though, are questions about the role of police protection in the United States: How much is enough and how much would be too much?
After the Dark Knight shooting, the New York Police Department mobilized to cover screenings of the film to thwart copycat crimes. And while that kind of reaction offered a sense of security to many moviegoers, a permanent police or military presence at all theaters and other public places would likely seem a little too Big Brother for most Americans.
Even if there were a public outcry for constant police surveillance, experts say, the American system of policing is far too decentralized to make that possible, making it highly unlikely that the United States will ever become a police state.
At the same time, debates continue about whether the American police system actually defends U.S. citizens from real threats or if we're blinded by a skewed sense of risk-assessment.
"We are much more likely to die in a car crash than from gun violence overall as a population, but that is considered as an acceptable risk," said Catherine Lutz, an anthropologist and professor of international studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
Lutz added that, instead of sending police to theaters, it might make more sense to put more officers "on the highway to make sure someone going 100 miles per hour doesn't kill a family of four going out for ice cream."
"We need to ask why we're paying attention to this risk now after this one case where a dozen people died, even though that many people times 10 died in car crashes today and that many people times some number died at the hands of a partner today," she said. "We have attentional deficit disorder regarding certain kinds of violent risks."
The term "police state" is generally used to refer to an oppressive police presence often ruled by a corrupt regime, but there are no clear-cut criteria for measuring when a nation has crossed the line. Opinions vary widely about how much surveillance is too much.
In the U.S. today, there are 233 police for every 100,000 citizens, Lutz said, putting us on par with countries like Brazil and Germany. Russia has twice as many police per capita. China and Iran have proportionally fewer police, even though those countries are often considered to be police states.
When it comes to evaluating whether a country qualifies as a police state, behavior seems to matter more than numbers do. And, when it comes to standards of behavior, the American police force has evolved significantly over the last 200 years.
In the early 1800s, law enforcement was carried out by vigilante organizations and local sheriffs who came together in response to crime waves or other specific incidents, said Maki Haberfield, a police training expert at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
Sheriffs would appoint a crew, often of ex-convicts, who were not paid and did not have to meet any standards to do the job.
A new era of more political policing began in the 1830s, but universal standards remained elusive. For the next 90 years, each local district developed its own system with its own views on uniforms, weapons and other issues. The only thing police of that era shared in common, Haberfield said, is that they were all corrupt, driven by politicians who used the police force to help them get votes.
The 1920s ushered in a more professional era with recognizable uniforms, patrol cars, professional associations, radios and other types of technology, as well as actual training, though training did not become mandatory until 1967.
The 1980s saw a shift toward more community-based policing, with the war on terror after 9/11 adding an emphasis on being prepared to fight terrorists and amorphous enemies.
Overall, Haberfield said, the history of policing in the United States has been so intentionally decentralized from the outset that the prospect of a unified American police force is extremely remote. Today, there are more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies around the country. Ninety-seven percent of departments in the U.S. have 50 or fewer officers, and some have just two or three. Each state has its own standards for training, with no national control over local agencies.
"You can see how diverse and uncontrollable the situation is," Haberfield said. "In terms of the fear of becoming a police state, it is absolutely the most unrealistic fear I can think of."
And yet, incidents like the Dark Knight shooting or the recent disappearance of two girls in Iowa make people afraid, even if their daily lives are full of much more likely threats. Politicians feed on that fear, Lutz said, earning points in the minds of voters when they offer comfort by, for example, sending police officers to movie theaters after a shooting thousands of miles away.
Recognizing the disconnect between our fears and the risks we truly face could help us allocate police protection in ways that might provide better protection for all of us.
"There is no simple equation for what is too much or too little protection," Lutz said. "Given the limited time and ability of police to protect, we need to consider what kinds of risks we really face, what's the best way to protect against them and who's being protected."
A SLEAZY reputation has historically been little impediment to a long career in Brazilian politics. Fernando Collor, a former president impeached in 1992 and found guilty of corruption while in office, is back in the Senate. Paulo Maluf, who has been charged in the United States with theft related to a kickback scheme during his terms as governor and mayor of São Paulo, is now a congressman. Congressional permission is required for ministers and legislators to be investigated for crimes committed in office, and only the Supreme Court can try them. That lets politicians get away with murder—sometimes literally. Arnon de Mello, a senator (and Mr Collor’s father) shot and killed another politician in the Senate in 1963, but was never tried.
Against this backdrop, the trial, due to start on August 2nd, of 38 people accused of involvement in Brazil’s biggest corruption scandal of recent years is a rarity. The central accusation in the “mensalão” (big monthly stipend) case is that, after coming to power in 2003, the Workers’ Party (PT) diverted money from the advertising budgets and pension schemes of state-controlled firms to pay off legislators from allied parties, in return for their support. The allegations first surfaced in 2005, and the Supreme Court took on the case in 2007. Only now are the judges ready to try it
Good Vocab and idea transformation by the Author.
On the eve of the Reserve Bank of India’s quarterly review of monetary policy, there was hardly any doubt that its concerns would remain focused on inflation. On Monday, a day before the review, the central bank reiterated the point that inflation remains sticky, with strong upside risks even at a time of sharp deceleration in the economy. More than at any time in the recent past, expectations from the financial markets for a rate cut were muted. Therefore, the decision to hold on to the policy rates and the cash reserve ratio while lowering the statutory liquidity ratio by one percentage point to 23 per cent was entirely on expected lines. The SLR reduction will augment liquidity and enable a more orderly monetary transmission. By far a bigger message is conveyed by the inaction on interest rates. The quintessential growth versus inflation debate has for the time being been settled in favour of price stability, without of course ignoring growth concerns. The RBI has more than once pointed out that inflation is inimical to growth; that low and stable inflation is an essential pre-condition for securing medium term growth; while monetary tightening has resulted in some sacrifice of growth in the short-term, in the medium-term, there is no trade off between growth and inflation control.
Slowdown concerns were very much in the RBI’s view when it frontloaded the policy rate reduction in April with a 50 basis points cut. However, since then, adverse developments impacting on both growth and inflation at home and abroad have made the RBI pause. Investors and policymakers alike closely watch the central bank’s projections of growth and inflation. The growth forecast for 2012-13 has been revised downwards from 7.3 per cent to 6.5 while the baseline projection for WPI inflation for March 2013 has been hiked to 7 per cent from 6.5. But there may be more gloom around the corner. External risks to the outlook for the Indian economy are intensifying. The festering euro area’s problems have increased risk aversion, financial market volatility and perverse capital flows. Weather related adversities in several parts of the world and the uncertain outlook for food and commodity prices, especially petroleum, have adverse implications for domestic growth and inflation. The deficient monsoon will exacerbate the already high food inflation. Failure to narrow the twin deficits — fiscal and current account — with appropriate policy actions threatens both macroeconomic and growth stability. Through its actions, the RBI hopes to anchor inflation expectations while maintaining enough liquidity to facilitate the smooth flow of credit to productive sectors.
As many as eight States in North India suffered their worst power outage in a decade when the electricity grid collapsed in the early hours of Monday. Though essential services were put back on stream in a few hours, it took more than half a day for the authorities to fully restore supply to Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chandigarh. Worse, the northern grid, along with the grids of the east and the northeast, buckled again on Tuesday. Like other parts of the world, India has experienced major power outages before. But unlike elsewhere, where grid collapses are usually caused by freakish acts of nature, the latest darkness at noon in India is the result of poor long-term planning and abysmal lack of grid discipline. Several reasons have been attributed for the sudden collapse, but the most likely seems to be the perennial problem of overdrawing by one or more States. On Monday, the authorities had to requisition power from Bhutan, and draw from the western and eastern grids to maintain essential supplies in Delhi for instance. That it should have failed for the second consecutive day is shameful.
A three-member panel has been set up to get to the bottom of this mess and will report back in two weeks. But the broad reason for the breakdown is not a mystery. The Power Grid Corporation has consistently been complaining about the lack of discipline among States in the northern grid. However, beyond the immediate mechanics of getting States to share the electricity shortfall during peak times lie two problems that can only be solved in the medium to long-term. States have to do a lot more to augment their baseload generating capacity. Some 10,000-20,000 MW of nuclear power may become available by 2020 but conventional thermal will have to bridge the gap in the near-term. At the same time, we need to augment our peak-load generation – the lack of which, at this time of reduced rainfall, contributed to the latest grid collapse. This means accelerating the commissioning of gas-fired thermal stations and ensuring adequate supply of gas, as well as giving a big push to nonconventional energy sources. State governments need to understand that they should either find the funds to invest in power generation, or make it worthwhile for the private sector to set up new plants that can feed into the grid in order to cope with rising demand. Unfortunately, most of the power-deficit States have been delinquent in expanding their generating capacity and in cutting down transmission and distribution losses. These are long-term issues that India ignores at its peril.
Source - http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article3708600.ece
Your report does not guarantee removal of this content from the site. It will be removed altogether only if a Moderator finds it especially useless after reviewing it.
