Sustainable HRM

Over 5 lakh have stake in Satyam's survival: CII

2009-01-10T23:36:00.001+05:30

Over 5 lakh have stake in Satyam's survival: CII

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Agencies Posted: Jan 10, 2009 at 1752 hrs IST

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New Delhi: The big question on survival of Satyam Computer is giving anxious moments not only to its over 50,000 employees but also to over half-a-million people, who would get impacted indirectly if the IT firm does not come out of the trouble, CII President K V Kamath said on Saturday.

Kamath said each of over 50,000 Satyam employees supports a family of four. "Every white collar job creates four another jobs. (So) you are talking about anything between half-a- million to a million people, who could directly or indirectly have been impacted by this single event," Kamath said.

He said the crisis had such a social magnitude that made the Government act swiftly and save the company. Besides CII, Assocham and Ficci have also welcomed disbanding of the Satyam board of directors by the government.

They expressed hope that the move would help restore investor confidence not only in Satyam but in corporate India in general.

Raju sent to central prison; CFO Vadlamani arrested

2009-01-10T23:29:00.000+05:30

Raju sent to central prison; CFO Vadlamani arrested

Hyderabad/New Delhi, Jan 10 (PTI) One more top official of Satyam was today arrested and disgraced founder Ramalinga Raju and his brother Rama Raju were sent to judicial custody as the government and regulator SEBI huddled in Delhi to put a new management together to run the IT company.
Raju, who three days ago disclosed a financial fraud in the company running into thousands of crores over several years, and his brother were produced before the 6th Chief Metropolitan Magistrate who remanded them to judicial custody till January 23, their lawyer Bharat Kumar said.

The siblings will be treated as "C" class prisoners vastly different from the luxury of their home in the posh Jubilee Hills and will be treated like other prisoners, jail officials said.

Vadlamani Srinivas, Satyam Computer's Chief Financial Officer, who resigned a day after the fraud came to light and which is yet to be accepted, was first picked up in the evening for questioning and was later formally placed under arrest, IG (CID) V S K Kaumudi said.

Srinivas has been arrested on the same charges that have been slapped on the Raju brothers--criminal conspiracy, cheating, use of forged documents, forgery and criminal breach of trust--under the Indian Penal Code, he said.

In Delhi, SEBI Chairman C B Bhave called on Corporate Affairs Minister Prem Chand Gupta to discuss coordinated action against Satyam - whose profits Raju admitted to inflating over the years - besides nominating new directors to the company's Board.

Gupta apprised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the developments. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy too called Singh to update him on the Satyam front, which the government has said dented corporate India's image globally.PTI

Court order clouds appointment of IIT directors

2008-12-25T21:31:00.001+05:30

Court order clouds appointment of IIT directors

CHARU SUDAN KASTURI

New Delhi, Dec. 24: All current IIT directors were appointed by a process violating at least some of the laws cited by Madras High Court yesterday in setting aside the re-appointment of IIT Madras chief M.S. Ananth.

Human resource development ministry documents accessed by The Telegraph reveal that the government never issued public notices inviting applications for the posts of directors, barring in IIT Bombay, to the institutes when they last fell vacant.

Article 16 of the Constitution states that “there shall be equality of opportunity for all citizens in matters relating to employment or appointment to any office under the state”. Article 14 refers to equal opportunities to all citizens.

The high court cited these articles yesterday while declaring illegal the appointment of Ananth for a second term in 2007.

“It is rather shocking that no public notice was given, no advertisement was given in newspapers for the post of director, thus violating Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution,” the court had said.

HRD ministry officials today confirmed that the government planned to challenge the high court order against Ananth’s re-appointment.

“We are still going through the judgment, but we have no option but to challenge this order as it affects all other directors as well,” an official said.

The court, officials complained, failed to give the government adequate opportunity to contest the allegations based on which the IIT director’s appointment was set aside.

The ministry may appeal either in Madras High Court, or — more likely — approach the Supreme Court, the sources said.

If the high court verdict is upheld in any appeal, it will cast a cloud of uncertainty over the appointment of other directors, too.

Section 17 of the IIT Act, 1961, states that “the director of each institute shall be appointed by the council with the prior approval of the Visitor (the President of India).” The council referred to is the IIT council, the highest decision-making body of the IITs, chaired by HRD minister Arjun Singh.

But ministry documents establish that for at least three director appointments apart from Ananth’s re-appointment, no meeting of the council was called.

The IIT council never met to deliberate on the appointment of the current IIT Kharagpur director. It also did not meet to decide the re-appointment of the current directors of IIT Guwahati and Kanpur, documents show.

As reported by The Telegraph yesterday, the IIT council has not met for over two years.

It is not clear whether the judge, Justice K. Chandru, expressly ruled against re-appointment of IIT directors in general, as the appellant E. Muralidharan had sought.

“In any event, when once the term of office is specified under statute, the same cannot be extended beyond that period,” the judge had said.

All directors are members of the IIT council, which under law is required to make fresh appointments to the post of director.

Allowing reappointments will imply institutionalising conflict of interest, the appellant argued, as a candidate will be sitting on the panel deciding on his candidature.

Several engineers are UNEMPLOYABLE

2008-12-22T22:02:00.001+05:30

Several engineers are UNEMPLOYABLE

Many engineering graduates just don’t have the right skills

Rajagopal Sreenivasan

   Bangalore may have many engineering students, but it looks as though many of them may be clueless about what they studied. In Bangalore alone, 25,000 engineering graduates are produced every year. But a recent survey shows that more than 30% of them are not skilled enough to be employed. In other words, they don’t know what they’ve studied or why they took it up in the first place.
   There may be several reasons for this such as parental pressure, and so on. But the the Indian education system is one of the prime culprits.
   A bit of investigation reveals the following facts: The teacher invests about two hours per subject to cram in the facts, figures, and derivations concerning it. But very little is being done to introduce the subject in a holistic sense. The relevance of the subject in the real world is hardly being emphasized.
   2. You can’t just blame the teachers. Assuming that the student does take pains to understand the subject on her own, more often than not, she meets a dead-end called exams, which reinforce the adage: curiosity killed the cat. Does more curiosity fetch more marks in a university exam? The answer is obvious.
   The approaches to a possible solution are: 1.Reduce the number of hours. Perhaps about one and half hours must be devoted to dwell on details concerning subject, and spend half an hour explaining its larger purpose and motivate them to study it.
   2. Exams must be made as unpredictable as possible. Standard question patterns in exams is a deterrent to learning. In reality, it’s ignorance that kills the cat but curiosity gets framed. Grades must bank on project work, interviews, interaction with peers and professors and, most importantly, on classroom discussions.
   Prof. S Sadagopan, director, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT_B) says: “Today’s students are well informed and fairly independent. They want engaging education. They prefer learning by doing. They want to solve challenging problems. All these make teaching them very different from what it used to be.”
   (The writer is a first year
   MTech student of IIIT-B)

Cabbie ends life

2008-12-22T22:00:00.000+05:30

Cabbie ends life

Harassment By Firm Alleged

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Bangalore:
Drivers employed by Easy Cab and other cab operators protested in front of the Bengaluru International Airport, alleging that one of its drivers committed suicide because of harassment by the company.
   Prakash of Madhugiri, Tumkur district, consumed poison on November 30 and was admitted to KIMS Hospital by his neighbours. He died on Friday.
   Drivers’ Association representative Allah Baksh alleged that harassment by owners of the company pushed Prakash to suicide. It collected Rs 25,000 as advance, before handing over the car, but failed to fulfil the promise made to the driver on maintenance and repairs.
   The company also allegedly harassed Prakash to pay daily rentals, he said, demanding Rs 10 lakh as compensation for the driver’s family.
   Easy Cab manager Unnikrishnan denied that the company harassed Prakash and made promises on repairs and maintenance. The company cannot pay any compensation, he said.

Divorce rate up 30% in 3 yrs

2008-12-22T21:58:00.000+05:30

Divorce rate up 30% in 3 yrs

Half The Cases In City Are From IT/BPO Industries

Dipannita Das | TNN

Bangalore: Digest this. The divorce rate in Bangalore has risen by an astonishing 30% in a short, three-year span. From 2,493 in 2005 to 3,243 this year, divorce filings before the family court are registering growth rates that would be the envy of any IT/BPO company. Incidentally, most of the cases do pertain to couples employed in Bangalore’s tech industry.
   While economic independence at the top end of the social strata is seen as motivator for women to opt out of bad marriages, at the lower end, it is the increased awareness of their rights, especially when confronted by abusive husbands. Increased societal acceptance of divorce, better access to courts and redressal mechanism are equally strong influencers.
   Advocates who deal in divorces say that more than 50% of cases filed are from the IT/BPO sector. While financial security is one factor, erratic working hours, work pressures, stress, all contribute to marital discord. Many professionals in IT/BPO sector find it difficult to strike work-life balance which impacts marriages negatively.
   Lawyers say that as the couple has the financial ability to cope with a split, there’s little effort made to make a difficult marriage work. This is borne out by the fact that in 30-40% of the cases, couples opt for divorce with mutual consent. Advocate B Srikumara of a legal firm says a majority of the tech couples heading towards splitsville are in their 20s and early 30s. Many married for a mere year or two. Women married to men a couple of years younger also seem to prefer divorce in noticeable numbers.

Sparring couples seek counsellors’ help

Bangalore: Divorce rates in Bangalore are on the rise. It isn’t as if only professional women are choosing to part from their spouses. Aarti Mundkur, an advocate, says women from all strata of society are coming forward to file for divorce. A large number of women seek divorce due to domestic violence and also because they are not valued or respected, she says.
   Couples do seek help from counsellors/psychiatrists to mend their relationship. Consultant psychiatrist Thomas MJ says the problem arises with long hours of work, night shifts, spending more time with colleagues, etc.

2 different scenarios, 1 result

Sudha and Amit,IT professionals, married for love. A year down the line it turned bitter. Her in-laws wanted her to do household chores when she returned from work. Finding it difficult to adjust, she filed for divorce.
   In another case, for Manjunath, an IT professional, the two years of married life did not work out. He could not spend quality time with his family. Working late at office he failed to pay attention to his wife or be a part in family decisions. Marital discord led to the couple separating by mutual consent.
   toiblr.reporter@timesgroup.com

2008-12-22T21:56:00.001+05:30

Might is right for most US teens: survey

   More than a quarter of all US teenagers think violent behaviour is at least sometimes acceptable, and one in five say they behaved violently toward another person in the past year, according to a new poll.
   Most said self-defence (87%) or helping a friend (73%) were acceptable justifications for violence. But 34% said revenge was a sufficient motivation.
   The poll was conducted by Opinion Research for the school-support organization Junior Achievement and the tax and consulting firm Deloitte, LLC.
   More than three-fourths of the respondents who said violence is acceptable also consider themselves ethically prepared to
enter the work force, according to a report on LiveScience.com. That sticks in the craw of David W Miller, who is the director of the Princeton University Faith & Work Initiative and a professor of business ethics at the Princeton University.
   In an analysis released with the poll, Miller suggests the survey results bode ill for the future workforce. It’s not clear that’s the case, however. In fact, teens are known to think differently than adults because their brains have not matured. Scans reveal that teens’ ethics change dramatically as they grow into adulthood. Or do they?
   The survey of 750 young people (half boys, half girls) age 12 to 17 was conducted between October 9 and October 12. The results were released this week.
   “It is highly troubling that so many teenagers have a self-image of ethical readiness and the confidence in their ability to make good decisions later in life, yet at the same time freely admit to current behaviour that is highly unethical,” Miller said in a statement accompanying the poll results. “Employers will have their hands full if a quarter of teens grow up still willing to resort to violence and other unethical behavior when it comes to making decisions about how to settle differences, protect their interests or get ahead,” said Miller in a statement. AGENCIES

YOUNG ’N’ RESTLESS: More than a quarter of all US teenagers think violent behaviour is sometimes acceptable

Harassment', long hours of work driving KSRTC crew to suicide?

2008-12-22T21:43:00.000+05:30

Harassment’, long hours of work driving KSRTC crew to suicide?

S. Rajendran

‘Working conditions have deteriorated after KSRTC was split’

Gaikwad

BANGALORE: The number of suicide cases involving employees of the four government bus corporations in the State over what has been alleged as harassment by their superiors and long hours of work, is on the rise.

The family of Vijaykumar (48), a senior driver of the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC), is in dire straits after he committed suicide on the premises of the Mangalore depot of the corporation in July. He had put in 18 years of service in the KSRTC.

“He was a bachelor and the sole breadwinner of the family. After his death, I and my two sisters have been left in the lurch. Even his Provident Fund and gratuity have not been settled since he had nominated his mother for the benefits. She too passed away soon after his death,” his brother Ganesh told The Hindu.

The KSRTC has refused to give any of the family members a job on compassionate grounds. The family lives in a small house at Kaniyoor in Belthangady taluk in Dakshina Kannada. No action has been taken against the divisional security inspector and a traffic inspector who had reportedly harassed and assaulted Vijaykumar on several occasions.

Conductor Chandrakantha of Shimoga was working in Gulbarga Division.

He drank poison while on duty and died unable to bear the alleged harassment by a traffic inspector. Gaikwad, senior driver of the Bijapur depot, committed suicide in the depot on February 16 by hanging.

In a suicide note, he stated that he was harassed by the depot manager. The authorities have not even questioned the manager concerned or any other officer.

Harishchandra, a caretaker at NWKRTC, committed suicide at the divisional workshop in Bijapur for similar reasons.

Several others, who had attempted suicide, have escaped death, thanks to medical intervention. On October 12, driver Athaulla attempted suicide in Kolar after he was “chased” by members of a checking squad of the KSRTC.

Driver Jagannatha of Kolar Division also attempted suicide in August. On October 23, M. Chandrappa, conductor, drank poison in the chamber of the Shimoga Depot manager and was rushed to hospital. Conductor Pavitra drank poison while on duty because of alleged harassment. She survived after medical intervention and is now facing a case of attempt to suicide.

Six drivers and conductors committed suicide in the past six years and 15 more attempted suicide. “It is a sad story of a government-run agency harassing its employees with an eye on making profit,” the KSRTC Staff and Workers’ Federation told The Hindu.

General Secretary of the federation H.V. Ananthasubba Rao said that working conditions had deteriorated after KSRTC was split.

“The strength of staff to bus ratio is one of the least in the KSRTC and the other three corporations. While it is 4.8 personnel for every government bus in the State, the ratio in Tamil Nadu is 6.5; it is 6.5 in Andhra Pradesh, Delhi Transport Corporation has 11, while BEST, Mumbai, has nine. Added to all this, there is no grievance settlement mechanism in such a mammoth corporation,” he said.

Managing Director of the KSRTC Gaurav Gupta said: “The government bus corporations maintain 40 per cent additional crew than really required to meet exigencies, including leave and weekly offs of employees. Suicides could always be for various reasons and will be looked into. We have an active labour welfare wing which is in touch with bus crew and conduct home visits and counselling wherever required. The bus-staff ratio here is reasonable.”

U.S. exporting recession to the world, says Stiglitz

2008-12-22T01:37:00.001+05:30

U.S. exporting recession to the world, says Stiglitz

Special Correspondent

Every successful economy is a market economy

There is need to design a new global system

— Photo: V.V. Krishnan

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz at the 10th D.T. Lakdawala memorial lecture on ‘Crises Today and the Future of Capitalism,’ in New Delhi on Saturday.

NEW DELHI: Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz on Saturday urged India and China to use the G-20 forum to press for a change in the global financial architecture that has been so disastrous for the world.

Describing the developed world’s decision to consult the G-20 as a positive outcome of the global meltdown, he was of the view that the two countries should also speak for the 152 countries which were not invited to the meeting.

Delivering the 10th D. T. Lakdawala memorial lecture on ‘Crises Today and the Future of Capitalism,’ the noted economist said the problem – essentially a U.S. export – had to be tackled globally. India and China, he added, had not suffered much from the meltdown because they did not liberalise their capital and financial markets despite U.S. nudging the two countries in this direction “just so that you could experience what we did!”

Arguing that every successful economy is a market economy, Professor Stiglitz pointed out that the problem lay in the way it evolved in the U.S. which privatised profits and socialised losses. “That is not capitalism,” he said, advocating a balance between the market and the government. Referring to the fear that too much regulation would stifle innovation, his counter was that a good regulatory system would actually encourage innovation.

Globalisation, according to the economist, had failed primarily because it was based on a flawed economic ideology.

Making out a case for a global regulatory authority, he said there was a need to design a new global system to develop immunity or at least limit the consequences of failure. Failure was contagious in the present brand of globalisation as a result of which the U.S. was exporting its recession to the rest of the world.

While there was recognition of the importance of a coordinated global fiscal and monetary response, he said the required reforms went deeper, and included creating a new global reserve system and a new global financial regulatory authority. And he underlined that globalisation had to ensure the maximum good for the maximum numbers and not just the privileged few who got richer under the existing regime.

Holding forth for nearly two hours, the former chief economist of the World Bank carried the audience along right through; punctuating his lecture – organised by Institute of Social Sciences – with digs galore at the U.S., particularly the Bush administration and its response to the crisis. The International Monetary Fund, too, came in for criticism for going around the world lobbying for deregulation like the United States.

About bailout packages, he likened it to giving mass blood transfusion to a patient who was haemorrhaging internally. Worse, he added, there was still no change in the mindset. As for American banks’ refrain on self-regulation, Professor Stiglitz said: “Self-regulation is an oxymoron. Banks said they knew how to manage risk and needed no regulation. What they knew was how to create risk. There is so much of blame to go around that they can all lay claim to it.”

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'Guide would not have had to be shot twice, if produced now'

2008-11-30T21:27:00.000+05:30

'Guide would not have had to be shot twice, if produced now'

Panaji, Nov 30 (PTI) Veteran actor Dev Anand has said he would not have had to shoot his film 'Guide' twice deleting certain content, if it was produced in the current days.
"Guide was made in two versions. One was American, based on the Novel by R K Narayan. Indian version was not the book one and had to change as there was little adultery content which was not considered as ethical during those times," Dev Anand told PTI.

Anand was felicitated at International Film Festival of India (IFFI) 2008 on Saturday here in presence of Goa Chief Minister Digamber Kamat, Actor Jackie Shroff and festival director S M Khan.

"Certain part of the American version dealt with adultery so we had to shoot the film once again," Anand said.

The 1965 movie starring Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman was directed by Vijay Anand, who had also contributed in the screenplay. A 120-minute US version was made with additional direction and writings. The US version was produced by Ted Danielswki.

"Now the country is ready for such subject matter and things are already being discussed on television and films," the veteran actor said.

These changes in outlook may be because of globalisation, he said.

Talking about his forthcoming film, 'Chargesheet', Dev Anand refused to talk much as according to him he would like to keep "suspense" over the film.

"It's a suspense thriller," he said, refusing to divulge the star-cast in it. "There are some new faces and old ones too," he added. PTI

Ironic, we eased just before being hit by terror: Ratan Tata

2008-11-30T21:25:00.001+05:30

Ironic, we eased just before being hit by terror: Ratan Tata

New York, Nov 30 (PTI) It is "ironic" that extra security measures, taken after being warned of a possible terror strike, were eased just before the terrorists assaulted the landmark Taj hotel, Tata group chief Ratan Tata said.
"It's ironic that we did have such a warning, and we did have some measures (for the additional security)," Tata told US news channel CNN from Mumbai.

The over 100-years-old iconic hotel stands mutilated in the financial capital of India after about 60-hour long siege by terrorists who indulged in arson and explosion before being gunned down by NSG guards yesterday morning.

Post attack, Tata rued that crisis infrastructure was "woefully poor" and the attacks revealed deficiencies in the law enforcement, especially in areas of crisis response and management.

"We are indignant but not scared," he quipped.

Although he did not elaborate on the additional security measures, Tata felt even these steps could not have prevented the terrorists from entering the hotel.

Speaking to CNN's Fareed Zakaria, he said that "people could not park their cars in the portico, where you had to go through a metal detector" due to the additional security.

".... If I look at what (measures) we had (enacted)... It could not have stopped what took place," Tata said, adding that the attackers did not come through the front door, where additional security measures had been temporarily enacted.

"They did not come through that entrance.. They came from somewhere in the back... They knew what they were doing and they did not go through the front. All of our arrangements were in the front. PTI

Sacked worker kills Indian-American CEO in US

2008-11-16T22:35:00.001+05:30

An Indian-American CEO of a semiconductor company was shot dead along with two other persons by a laid-off employee of the firm in northern California, police said.

Sid Agrawal, the chief executive officer of SiPort Inc, the company's vice president of operations Brian Pugh and an unidentified woman was killed when several rounds were fired on the premises of the firm in Santa Clara on Friday.

Police said investigators are searching for Jing Hua Wu, 47, in connection with the shooting.

Jing worked as a lead product test engineer for the four-year-old firm, media reports here said. Police said he had recently been laid off from the company and investigators are exploring that as a possible motive in the shooting.

It is believed that a handgun was used in the shooting, a police official told reporters.

Police released a description of the vehicle in which Jiang is believed to have fled and launched a manhunt for him.

According to his biography in the company's website, Agrawal had more than 25 years of experience at startup and established high-technology companies, including at Adobe, Intel and Bell Labs.

He held a degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT-Kanpur, an MS degree from Southern Illinois University and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

'No thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers': Obama

2008-11-16T22:24:00.001+05:30

'No thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers': Obama

Chicago, Nov 16 (PTI) The "greatest economic challenge of our time" has taught him that "we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers," US President-elect Barack Obama has said, signalling that he plans to overhaul the American financial markets.
"If this financial crisis has taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers -- in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people," Obama said in his second radio address after his historic election to America's top office on November 4, indicating his resolve to clean-up the current mess in the US financial sector.

In his message coinciding with G-20 summit, Obama noted the leaders of the world's largest economies were seeking solutions to the "ongoing turmoil in our financial markets." In his pre-poll speeches, Obama has said he sees an overhaul of Wall Street regulations as crucial to restoring trust in US markets.

The housing-market meltdown and credit crisis that have pushed the US economy to the brink of a recession have led to debates in Washington over how US regulations could be revamped to head off future crises.

Backing incumbent President George W Bush for initiating the meeting, the 47-year-old Democrat senator said the global economic crisis required a coordinated global response.

"Make no mistake: this is the greatest economic challenge of our time. And while the road ahead will be long, and the work will be hard, I know that we can steer ourselves out of this crisis -- because here in America we always rise to the moment, no matter how hard," he said and voiced confidence that the American economy would be revived soon.

"I am more hopeful than ever before that America will rise once again," he said, stressing the US government should act in concert with other nations. PTI

Chidambaram asks US, Europe to 'set their house in order'

2008-11-16T10:49:00.001+05:30

Chidambaram asks US, Europe to 'set their house in order'

Washington, Nov 15 (PTI) Finance Minister P Chidambaram has asked the US and Europe to "set their house in order" to reverse the impact of the financial crisis on economies worldwide and help capital to flow back to developing nations.
"If they (US and Europe) set their house in order, surely capital will flow back to developing countries...Credit will flow back and things will be much better", he said in an interview to business news channel NDTV Profit ahead of the G-20 Summit here.

The Minister further said, "What India wants is that the country where this crisis originated...The US and some countries in Europe must do all that is necessary to reverse the impact of the crisis of the global economy, especially the economies of the developing countries".

Asked about the ways to encourage capital flow back to developing countries, Chidambaram said, "We do not have to do anything more. What we have had in place was enough to attract capital in the last three years. What is happening now is because of what is happening in their countries." PTI

PM@ G20->failure of regulatory and supervisory mechanism

2008-11-16T10:47:00.000+05:30

Sharp focus on financial meltdown at G20 meet

PM seeks fiscal package

Washington, PTI:

Warning that the financial meltdown has exploded into a systemic crisis, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday asked the world leaders to work on a coordinated fiscal package to tackle recession that is hitting India and other developing countries.

Attributing the crisis to failure of regulatory and supervisory mechanism, Singh said “We must give the world a clear signal to take specific coordinated action to handle the crisis in a manner which restores confidence and which also responds to the needs of the developing countries.”

A credible system of multilateral surveillance which can signal the emergence of imbalances, should be designed to protect the world from recurrence of such crisis, Singh said while addressing the G-20 Summit, convened by US President George W Bush. He also suggested a multi-pronged approach to spur investment, global trade and capital flows to re-instill investors’ confidence.

Advocating a coordinated fiscal stimulus to help mitigate severity and duration of the recession, Singh pressed for urgent steps to strengthen the global trading system and forestall any protectionist tendencies which surface during such crisis.

Singh, an eminent economist himself, prescribed a slew of measures, including short-term swap arrangements, special incentives to counter shrinkage of capital inflows and activating a process of replenishing IMF resources.
“Resorting to fiscal stimulus may be viewed as risky in some situations, but if we are indeed on the brink of the worst downturn since the Great Depression, the risk may be worth taking,” he told the Summit which has leaders from the United Kingdom, France, China, Japan Italy and other leading nations.

The Summit deliberated on short-term, medium and long-term steps to overcome the financial crisis.
The Prime Minister said industrialised countries could help revive trade flows in developing nations by expanding the scale of export credit finance available to them.

What’s on

* Leaders from major developed and emerging countries wrap up their G20 summit on Saturday (Sunday Indian time)
* They are expected to unveil a plan for repairing the world financial system, ravaged by the credit crisis
* On the agenda are: quick action to boost growth
* A broad framework for further discussions on market reforms, financial regulation and revamp of the international financial order
* The IMF’s role as policeman for financial and economic stability is under review
* G20 leaders are likely to meet again in the first three months of 2009 — once Barack Obama takes over as US president
* Britain, as next year's G20 chair, may be the host

Asian banks' employees come together to protect jobs

2008-11-16T10:46:00.001+05:30

Asian banks' employees come together to protect jobs

New Delhi, PTI:

In the midst of the global financial crisis taking its toll on banks in the US and Europe, employees of Asian banks have joined hands to form the first transnational association of the financial sector workforce to protect their jobs.

"The association formed on Saturday will be called the Asian Regional Organisation of Banks, Insurance and Finance Unions (AROBIFU), having representation from 15 Asian countries," said All India Bank Employees Association General Secretary C H Venkatachalam, who has been elected President of AROBIFU.

To begin with, the association will have representation of 20 unions from countries including India, South Korea, Pakistan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, he said.

Venkatachalam said the association has twin objectives of ensuring job safety and resisting forces that may attempt to hinder the socio-economic growth of Third World countries, particularly Asian countries.

It is now an established fact that the current global financial sector crisis is the result of the fallacy and failure of the policies of liberalisation, globalisation and privatisation, he said.

"The myth of free market stands totally exposed all over the world," he said.

Therefore, like-minded people in Asian countries have decided to form an association to safeguard the interests of employees and customers, he said.

The secretariat will function from Chennai, he said, adding other office-bearers are from Sri Lanka, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Taiwan.

Global slowdown turns the heat on six lakh garment workers

2008-10-28T22:37:00.000+05:30

Global slowdown turns the heat on six lakh garment workers

Bageshree S. and Sharath S. Srivatsa

Orders come down by 10 per cent; units resort to lay-offs

Factories are facing problems with deferred purchase

Many are giving extended Deepavali break to workers

— Photo: K. Murali Kumar

Workers entering their factory in Bangalore in this file photo of April 15, 2008, are facing an uncertain future.

BANGALORE: This Deepavali has not brought cheer to owners and workers of apparel factories here with the slowdown in the world economy affecting the industry. Several factories here are facing problems with deferred purchase.

The orders for factories, which are dependent on exports, mainly to the U.S., have come down by about 10 per cent following deferred buying by big apparel brands.

Industry insiders say that the situation might become worse in the next quarter if the global situation does not improve by then.

Reduced spending

Rising unemployment and reduced spending by the Americans have forced some of the leading brands in the U.S. to close down their outlets, which in turn has affected the apparel industry here. The U.S. accounts for 55 per cent of all global apparel imports.

Sandeep Walia, Chief Executive Officer of Arwind Apparels, told The Hindu that the industry was in “recessionary mode,” and industries were looking at “building in efficiency” and “cutting out all the fat” by cutting down on expenses, such as avoidable air travel, and “increasing plant efficiency”.

While some of the smaller units have closed shop, many are giving extended Deepavali break to workers with a rider that they will make up for this when the orders start pouring in.

The fact that people in Europe and the U.S. are not walking into stores of branded apparels and buying brands such as GAP, Lands End, Ann Taylor, West Seal and J.C. Penny has affected business, said Ravi Kishore, an industry consultant.

“Many of these brands which have businesses in India have deferred purchase,” he said.

Acknowledging that there is an “anticipation of slowdown” by December if the present trend continues, Jagdish N. Hinduja of Gokuldas Images, said that orders were “reasonably good” at present.

Feeling the heat

Meanwhile, the downward trend has turned the heat on about six lakh garment workers in the city.

The industries are resorting to reducing the shift size and giving offs to the employees.

Kumari, a worker in a factory at Gowdanapalya near Uttarahalli, said that production targets were so strict now that workers found it difficult to take a break even to drink water.

She had no work between October 2 and 13 and is yet to know if she will be paid for this period.

Holidays

A company on Mysore Road, which employs 2,700 workers, has been giving week-long holidays to employees by turns.

“They have been paid for this period and told that they should compensate for it when work picks up again,” said K.R. Jayaram of Garment and Textile Workers Union.

Vishalakshi, who worked as a tailor at MD Apparels at Madanayakanahalli, lost her job when the unit closed down. She joined another factory in the same locality, but was paid only Rs. 120 a day as against Rs. 147 paid earlier.

“The market is down and they said I could quit if I was not happy with the pay,” she says. Ms. Vishalakshi is now looking for her third job within six months.

A manager of a unit near Nelamanagala said he had instructions to cut about 10 per cent of the employee strength after strict performance appraisals. Overtime wages had been stopped, he added.

Obama harps on 'change'; McCain calls him 'redistributionist'

2008-10-28T22:18:00.000+05:30

Obama harps on 'change'; McCain calls him 'redistributionist'

Washington, Oct 28 (PTI) With the election day just a week away, Republican presidential nominee John McCain sparred with rival Barack Obama over economy, charging that he was planning a "redistribution" of wealth, while the Democrat stuck to his pet theme of "change" from the "failed" policies.
McCain, desperate to gain ground after trailing in a series of opinion polls, again sought to project Obama as a "socialist", a term that still arouses suspicion in the US.

Campaigning in the key state of Pennsylvania, he dubbed the Democrat a "redistributor-in-chief", a reference to the allegation that if elected, he will be "redistributing" wealth instead of creating opportunities to increase wealth.

"Senator Obama believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs. He said even though lower taxes on investment help our economy, he favours higher taxes on investment for 'fairness'," McCain said.

"There's nothing 'fair' about driving our economy into the ground. We all suffer when that happens, and that is the problem with Senator Obama's approach to our economy." Obama, in campaign trail in the battleground state of Ohio, placed a "closing argument" before voters, asking them to choose "change" over the "failed" Bush-McCain policies that have led the US to present financial mess.

Ohio has been hurting due to the financial crisis and both the nominees were pitching their economic plans there, including the routine take on manufacturing and outsourcing.

The US is in the midst of the "worst economic crisis since the Great Depression", Obama said.

"I can take one more week of John McCain's attacks, but this country can't take four more years of the same failed politics and the same failed policies. It's time to try something new," he said. PTI

Woman delivers baby in auto-rickshaw, court gives compensation

2008-10-27T20:30:00.002+05:30

Woman delivers baby in auto-rickshaw, court gives compensation

New Delhi, Oct 21 (PTI) A woman, who had to deliver her baby in an auto-rickshaw after being denied ambulance service, has been awarded a compensation of Rs 50,000 by the Delhi Consumer Commission which held the government-run ESI hospital guilty for deficiency in service.
"These hospitals are meant for providing medical facilities particularly to the weaker sections of the society and making them to run from pillar to post for getting treatment is inexcusable and for such grossest deficiency in service, the hospitals are bound to compensate the patients," Commission President Justice J D Kapoor said.

The Commission also into consideration the fact that the new-born baby could not survive due to lack of prompt medical care on the part of the hospital.

Jasde Negi, a resident of Trilokpuri in east Delhi, was regularly visiting the Noida-based ESI hospital after she conceived. On June 21, last year, she was denied the ambulance services by the hospital when she was writhing in labour pain.

The woman, was refused admission and was rather advised to approach GTB hospital for delivery.

The harried woman delivered the baby in an auto-rickshaw on her way to the GTB hospital. The child, unfortunately, could not survive.

The ESI hospital took the plea that its two ambulances out of three were out of order and it had no other option but to advise the woman to go to GTB on her own.

"Ambulances are such vehicles, which have to be kept in perfect order and available at every given point of time... and the organisation did not pay any heed to such kind of deficiencies," the Commission said in a release. PTI

Emotions communicated via instant messaging 'contagious'

2008-10-27T20:30:00.001+05:30

Emotions communicated via instant messaging 'contagious'

New York, Oct 26 (PTI) Instant messaging, a form of online communication that allows real-time interaction through computers or mobile phones, has nowadays become popular with more and more young people due to its speed and ease of use.
Now, a new study has claimed that just as with talking face-to-face, the emotions communicated via instant messaging (IM) are also contagious.

Researchers at Cornell University in New York, led by Prof Jeffrey Hancock, have based their findings on an analysis of communication of 44 pairs of volunteers recruited for the study, the 'New Scientist' reported.

Prior to taking part in the communication, one person in each pair was told to see either a harrowing film scene or a clip from another film depicting small talk.

Subsequently, all the subjects were asked to chat online for 15 to 20 minutes. They were also instructed to find out more about each other and to discuss about something that was worrying them.

The researchers found not only that each participant could accurately assess their partner's mood, but that those paired with someone who had watched the harrowing film scene felt sadder than before the chat. PTI

In UK, one in five has sex with colleagues

2008-10-27T13:25:00.001+05:30

SPICING UP WORK

In UK, one in five has sex with colleagues

London: For Britons, it seems that the term “job satisfaction” has a whole new meaning, with one in five admitting to sex at work.
   A recent survey in Britain has revealed that one out of five people has had sex at work — in fact a quarter of men would consider selling bodies for money while one in ten women would sleep with someone to advance their career.
   It found that almost half of all Britons (49%) have had a one-night stand, with men (57%) more likely than women (42%) to have done so. But a generation gap was revealed, with more than two thirds (64%) of those aged between 25 and 44 having had a one-night stand, compared with just 24% of those aged 65 and over.
   Moreover, according to survey commissioned by the Observer newspaper, one in five Britons does not believe that monogamy is desirable, while three out of ten actually do not think that it is natural.
   The survey of over 1,000 adults also found that people remained socially conservative on some issues with 45% of Britons feeling gay couples should not be allowed at all to get married.
   Surprisingly, the survey found that almost one in four Britons (24%) believed homosexual sex should be made illegal, a one per cent increase in the proportion of people who believed this since 2002, the British newspaper reported on Sunday. Likewise, there were indications that Britons are losing their virginity earlier than in previous years.
   Among the 65 plus age group, the average age at which virginity was lost was 19, while the average Briton (41%) loses their virginity between the ages of 16 and 17. A third of people in fact lose their virginity before the age of consent.
   Three out of four Britons are satisfied with their sex life. There is very little difference between the genders or age groups in this respect. AGENCIES

The corporatization of greed

2008-10-27T12:37:00.000+05:30

The corporatization of greed

SANTOSH DESAI

   Could the global economic crisis be an inflection point of some? Is it possible that what global warming could not do, the global meltdown will manage- make us re-think not just our regulations and our institutions but the path that we are choosing to walk down? For India, in particular, standing as it does at the threshold of economic resurgence, is this an opportunity to ask what its destination should be, instead of being thankful that it is relatively protected on account of its regulated past.
   It appears that one of the biggest lessons learnt in the current crisis is that the financial system cannot regulate itself and that left to its own devices it will push outwards without regard for risks. And given the interdependent nature of the world economy, it will suffice if even a couple of large players go for broke and succeed. The idea that selfinterest will create energy that will propel us forward while our institutions act as checks and balances to ensure that this self-interest does not become self-destruction, is a theoretically sound one but one that has been deeply compromised in practice.
   At a more fundamental level, the growth-centric nature of the economic system creates accomplices out of the institutions meant to control it. The regulatory bodies, the experts, the business press all become shrill cheerleaders for growth and implicitly push the case for more growth while muffling other voices. We have seen this in India in the last few years, with a conspiracy of cheer that brooked no bad news. The India story had a momentum of its own, taking on a reality of its own making. We cheered when 4 out of the top 10 richest people were Indian, not asking if there war something deeply wrong with this. In an article written in this column in March of this year, it had been pointed out that it is interesting that we have begun to embrace the riches of a few as our own while shunning the penury of many as belonging to them. The poor today are an electoral fabrication, vestiges of an India we are eager to leave behind.
   The idea of the economy has been exceptionally well marketed; so much so that we conflate our notion of the business sector with that of the Indian economy which in turn in an act of implicit compression becomes shorthand for India. What we call the economy is an abstract construction, a virtual presence with boundaries marked by the self-interest of those in charge of running it. The interests of the millions that lie outside this definition of the economy are a struggle to accommodate and often when steps are taken in this direction, they are labelled populist. So it was wrong to waive off loans for impoverished farmers but it is all right to look sympathetically at the airline industry’s demand for a bail-out. Somehow, the threatened impoverishment of messieurs Goyal & Mallya makes us readier to act than the suicide of a few thousand farmers.
   The idea that the market can be selfregulating has been exposed as being false. The nature of the joint stock corporation makes it uniquely suited to drive a growth-at-any-cost agenda. Structurally, it atomises ownership, accountability and conscience. The widely held joint stock company in its purest form has no single owner, no one human source that we can attach consequences to. Theoretically, everyone has a share and no one is eventually responsible. The goals of a corporation, the driving ambitions that it nurtures are those of a self-sustaining organism. The corporation is its own justification. The idea of nameless and fragmented shareholders whose interests seemingly drive it, allows the corporation license to drive an agenda divorced from any larger social context.
   The reductive nature of the corporation allows it to multiply endlessly- without any sense of the consequences of its actions. The corporation cannot say no, unless the law explicitly requires it to say so. The owned by no one nature of corporations allows a culture to develop where actions do not need to conform to any rules but those developed internally. People can be fired overnight, fantastic exaggerations can be told about the products that it sells and its financial performance can be window dressed without any great self-doubt. The corporation gives a license to people to behave in ways they never would in their personal lives.
   The corporation cannot be trusted to balance larger needs for it has not been designed with that goal in mind. It is like a software program, with its own in-built heuristic, which it gives it great facility in some areas and very little in others. To depend on it to regulate itself is to expect too much from it.
   The opportunity today is to take a hard look not just at how to make the system work better but to ask as to whether we should be working to build a new system altogether. For the current system is not only unstable but unsustainable. But that would need the courage to detach ourselves from the wisdom of others and to try and find our own truth. It will mean making our own mistakes rather than the paying the price of the mistakes of others. I am not sure we are ready to do that just yet.
   santoshdesai1963@indiatimes.com

Sons of the soil got raw deal, says Shobhaa De

2008-10-27T12:36:00.001+05:30

Sons of the soil got raw deal, says Shobhaa De

New Delhi: MNS chief Raj Thackeray has found another ally for his Marathi cause with novelist Shobhaa De backing his campaign saying the Sons Of The Soil get a ‘raw deal’ in the state when jobs and other opportunities are concerned.
   “I can understand what he is trying to tap into. I can understand the reason why he has succeeded to this extent. He may have tapped into something very real,” De said in a television interview.
   “In fact, it is everybody else first and Maharashtra last. I don’t blame everybody else and I don’t look on them as outsiders. I think Maharashtrians need to do a great deal of inner looking and thinking to figure out why the city’s complexion has changed,” she said.
   Backing Raj Thackeray, the noted author said, “He has a right to speak what he wants to and the same right to challenge and oppose.” Even while asserting that Thackeray was being political, she said,”It seems that it is only in Maharshtra that Marathi people seem to be the last to get jobs”.
   “I am definitely saying Maharashtrians have got a raw deal, which does not mean that I am in any way supporting violence and endorsing what Raj Thackeray stands for. A raw deal also has a lot to do with the Maharashtrian way of not asserting themselves.”
   “They are too laid back and there is a lot of intellectual arrogance. Maharashtrians are not assertive enough at all,” De said. On if it should be compulsory to speak Marathi in Mumbai, De said, “In West Bengal, people speak Bengali, in Karnataka they speak Kannada, in Tamil Nadu, they speak Tamil. Well the disconnect is happening in Mumbai because people think of Mumbai as belonging to all of India.”
   “It is a question of identity. It is happening everywhere, but Mumbai seems to attract a lot of media attention on account of this. The question of identity is hurting deep down,” she said. When asked if she would consider herself to be a Mumbaikar or a Bombayite, De said, “I am an Indian first.” AGENCIES

‘In fact, it is everybody else first and Maharashtra last. I
‘think Maharashtrians need to do a great deal of thinking to figure out why the city’s complexion has changed
Shobhaa De | NOVELIST

ROAD monopoly

2008-10-27T12:31:00.001+05:30

ROAD monopoly

Citing profit-making BMTC, the government wants to nationalize all routes in Karnataka. But private operators are pitching for denationalization, promising better services to commuters

Rishikesh Bahadur Desai | TNN

Bangalore: It is a matter of pride that BMTC is making hay when government-run transport corporations are making losses the world over. Some attribute its success to the near monopoly it enjoys in running buses in the state, and not to efficient management.
   Advocates of free market say competition will give the best service to commuters at competitive prices. But others point out no private transport service provider could match up to BMTC’s record.
   Government officials maintain nationalization has served the purpose of providing cost-effective transport to the people and helped state transport corporations (STUs) recover their costs. Private bus operators, however, say the government has done a disservice to the people by operating a public sector monopoly. And the debate goes on.

BACKGROUND

The Road Transport Corporation, 1950, protects BMTC from competition. This Act by the Centre has enabled all state road transport corporations to enjoy a near monopoly.
   There were some private transport companies in Karnataka just after Independence. But the government took over those companies by using the Karnataka Contract Carriages (Acquisition) Act of 1976.
   Most of them were compensated. However, companies whose permits had expired did not get compensation. Today, KSRTC and its offshoots — BMTC that serves Bangalore, NWKRTC operating in the 10 north-western districts and NEKRTC, that runs buses in the five north-eastern districts — cover almost all villages and hamlets with motorable roads. KSRTC and BMTC are making profits while NWKRTC and NEKRTC have significantly reduced their losses over the last decade.

WHAT IS NATIONALIZATION OF ROUTES?

It means some routes are reserved for STUs and therefore, private buses are not allowed to ply on them. Routes in Bangalore and 19 districts are nationalized. The government reserves the right to further nationalization and denationalization.
   The logic behind nationalization is that public transport is a service and not a business. In a welfare state, the government has the responsibility of connecting each village to the nearest highway or main road.
   But no private player will run buses to villages as that would not be profitable. The government has to take full responsibility of rural service through its transport corporations. And to do this, the corporations need to make money from catering to remunerative routes. Or else, public sector corporations will end up in the red.
   A recent example is that of Orissa state transport corporation. It had to stop operations for some time after suffering huge losses. Even today, it has only 100 buses.

PARALLEL SERVICE

This is the principle that allows STUs and private buses to operate on the same routes. The principle behind this is commuters get the best service, as public and private operators compete. This system is being applied in 10 districts in Karnataka.

WHY NATIONALIZATION?

Running buses to small villages and hamlets is not profitable, but the government has to take on the burden as private operators do not wish to share a non-profitable route.
   It is estimated that a transport company needs a remunerative route for every loss-making route in order to operate on a noprofit, no-loss basis. This explains why government-run corporations perform on the principles of commercial prudence.
   Transport minister R Ashok strongly favours nationalization. The present policy is to have 70% nationalized routes, but he wants to make it 100%. “Our model has worked well. Why should we change it?’’ he asked. “There is no question of denationalizing existing routes. On the contrary, we want to have a monopoly of public transport.’’
   The corporation provides free bus passes to school students and subsidized passes to college students worth Rs 120 crore per year. It also issues passes to senior citizens and physically challenged people.
   “We have a fleet of buses that include Airavat (Volvos), air-conditioned Mayuras, Rajahamsas and Grameena Sarige (mini buses). Today, we have the largest fleet of Volvos among state transport undertakings,’’ he said.
   The KSRTC’s breakdown rate is one per one lakh of km and is one of the lowest among STUs in the country. “We also have the lowest accident rates among STUs,’’ he added. “Comparative studies show that BMTC is the only city transport corporation in the world that has consistently made profits. Why should we lose such credit?’’

WHY PRIVATIZATION?

Private operators, however, disagree. The government cannot go on with nationalization for long. It has to open up this space for private investment, says Rajavarma Ballal, president of the state federation of private bus operators. He feels government-run corporations will never be able to invest as much money as needed in the sector, and run as efficiently as they do. “If you need to understand the difference between STUs and private operators, you need to compare the services provided by private operators in districts like Dakshina Kannada and Udupi, and those offered by STUs in fully nationalized districts like Gulbarga and Raichur, he said.
According to him, the government discriminates against private operators. The tax the government levies on KSRTC is different from what it extracts from us, he said.
Ballal said KSRTC and other STUs pay a fraction of their earnings to the government. NWKRTC and NEKRTC have been exempted from tax till they break even. BMTC pays 3% of its earnings as tax and KSRTC pays 5%.
   However, private operators are made to pay advance tax of Rs 550 per seat per quarter, irrespective of whether the bus operates and makes money or not. He said STUs suffer losses due to their inefficiency, but blame it on competition from private operators. “Worse still, the STU staff are bleeding them. They clandestinely own 75% of the 38,000 maxicabs in the state,’’ he said.
He rubbishes the argument that private operators will not ply buses to villages. “Each village with a road is covered by us in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts. No such private operator has ever made losses. If you offer prompt service, people are willing to pay for it,’’ he said. “If they privatize KSRTC and let us run it, we will show them 10-fold profits,” challenges Ballal. Is the state ready for such a challenge?

IN FIGURES

The four STUs have a total of over 20,000 buses

They carry nearly 80 lakh passengers per day

Each bus covers an average of 300 km per day

This means one out of six persons in state boards an STU bus at least once a day

INNOVATIONS

Online booking

Rainwater harvesting in bus stands

Use of biofuel Pongamia oil to reduce fuel costs

De-addiction programme for staff that has been praised by ILO

KSRTC has the best fuel efficiency among STUs

STUs have achieved a turnaround in just eight years

Plans for midway plazas as eateries across the state

Package tours with KSTDC

KSRTC has been doing well. Why change the system unnecessarily? Already, there is some attempt to allow private parties. But no effort should be made to denationalize them. P G R Sindhia | FORMER TRANSPORT MINISTER WHO INITIATED THE REFORM PROCESS AND SET THE STAGE OF SPLITTING THE BEHEMOTH INTO REGION-WISE CORPORATIONS IN THE 1990S

Agri contribution to State's economy poor

2008-10-27T12:14:00.000+05:30

Agri contribution to State's economy poor

By Asha Krishnaswamy, DH News Service, Bangalore:

Agriculture is the livelihood of most workers of Karnataka. But it has seen sluggish growth over the last one decade. The rapidly declining share of agriculture in the economy and its poor growth prospects indicate its inability to absorb the growing workforce and provide productive opportunities or higher incomes.

This is highlighted in the draft - Karnataka - A Vision for Development, prepared by the State Planning Board. The draft was presented recently to the Vision 2020 group headed by CM Yeddyurappa.

The sector exhibits low growth of 0.8 per cent but is absorbing a large amount of labour as it still employs about 61 per cent of the workers. This also shows a decline in output per worker and falling labour productivity.

The draft says Karnataka's Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) has grown at a decent rate of 6% between 1983-84 and 2004-05. But this has not translated into an equally impressive growth in its employment potential.

While the share of the State's income has been shifting rapidly away from agriculture, the employment potential of the growing industries and services sectors has not been impressive.

Employment in agriculture hardly decreased from 65% to 61% in the period 1993 to 2005, whereas its GSDP contribution halved from 36% to 18%. This means that a disproportionately high number of workers in the State depend on this sector for their livelihood.

Moreover, agricultural productivity in Karnataka has not seen any appreciable improvements. Almost one-fourth of the total cultivable area in the State is under ragi, bajra and jowar. But increase in their yields over the past 50 years has been at a compound annual growth rate of only 0.6%, 1.1% and 1.8% respectively.

The draft further says around 70% of rural households in the State have land holdings of less than one hectare. The average size of operational holdings has nearly halved from 3.20 ha in 1970-71 to 1.63 ha in 2005-06. In addition, close to half of the land holdings are marginal with an average size of 0.45 ha and their uneconomical size has adverse effects on land productivity. Movement of workers out of agriculture into more productive sectors will help ease pressure on land, improve overall productivity, and increase incomes for those remaining in the sector.

The draft gives the example of Korea and Malaysia where agriculture sector took a beating like in the State. Korea's agriculture contributed to 43% of the GDP and 63% of employment in 1963. This has shifted to 3.4% and 7.9% respectively in 2005. Malaysia's agriculture contributed to 43% of the GDP and 63% employment in 1965.

This has shifted 8.2% and 13.3% respectively in 2005. These countries have rapidly aligned their employment structure to the shifting nature of GDP composition through policies for equitable distribution of growth including thrust on universal literacy and skill development of the workforce, female education, reduction in poverty etc., and this is what Karnataka should also aspire for.

While output per worker in agriculture changed from Rs 14,600 in 1993-94 to Rs 15,000 in 2004-05 (at 1999-2000 prices), it grew at a much faster rate of in services from Rs 58,500 to Rs 1,05,000. If the existing trend continues in sectoral growth and employment absorption, this ratio will increase further and disparities in the State's workforce will worsen.

'Is firing labour the only solution for India Inc?'

2008-10-22T22:34:00.000+05:30

'Is firing labour the only solution for India Inc?'

There are those who fall under the Industrial Disputes Act and the Shops and Establishments Act and those who don't. These are two Acts under which non-officers and supporting staff cannot be retrenched. The law is very clear that those falling under these workmen's Acts can't be retrenched. Retrenchment can only take place when it comes to the officer cadre in India. That is why industry has been asking for flexibility through a central industries act to enable retrenchment of non-officers as well. Once you hire for three months, you should have the freedom to terminate jobs when you don't require the worker. The other issue is that most states don't give licences under Contract Labour Act to industries. Where there is no licence available under contract labour law, industries are forced to either make a self declaration at the risk of getting caught and fined or fall back on more machines. Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra are coming with separate laws to bring flexibility to their labour laws.

When you don't have a job and are offered one under contract, at least you get an opportunity to work. If that opportunity is denied, industry will become capital-intensive. This section needs more flexibility of law as industry is getting more and more capital-intensive. As far as officers are concerned, they get a month's advance notice period when asked to leave. It works both ways. The worker also can give a month's notice and quit and get a better job. In fact the latter is more common than the former.

Non-officers cannot be fired as the workers will go to court. But this law can be made flexible only if there is a social security net to cushion employees when the law permits retrenchments.

In India, we have no social security system and hence we don't want a hire-and-fire law for non-officers. This is an area which has to be rectified. In the US, when a workman is fired, he gets unemployment insurance for six months and so there is breathing space to find jobs.

The US is, in fact, today drowning under asocial security system which makes workers today pay for workers of yesterday. With a decrease in population, it has meant a few supporting the pension costs of many.

We have to start off with flexibility of contract law and in the next ten years we should have a good social security system in place.

The good thing about contract labour is that it gives jobs. We have 12.5 million people joining the labour force annually and only 2.8 million have formal training. The remaining 10 million can get trained only in a contract job and they can then go up the ladder. If you don't have flexibility in the law to allow companies to remove workmen, industry will depend more on machines as they can't take on any more permanent liability than their capacity.

'If you don't have labour flexibility, firms will just employ more capital and this will hurt the workers whose interests are being protected'

Clearly not. But to take the case of the Indian airline industry which is in the news, its fleet must be cut by a fifth but it can't do this unless it also has the right to fire workers

AMIT MITRA

Secretary General Ficci Some time ago, the Reserve Bank of India did a study and found that workers are not responsible for 60 per cent of the problems with any given company. Problems like mismanagement, embezzlement and government policy took the chunk of the blame for companies running losses. But when an industry becomes sick, it is the worker who gets the axe.

The Philadelphia declaration which led to the formation of the International Labour Organisation says labour is not a commodity but even today when MNCs outsource or offshore to other countries, they consider labour the chief commodity. What is happening now is the survival of the fittest which is a jungle law. We want welfare of the weakest which befits the human society.

Under Section 25 Clause 5B of the Industrial Disputes Act, if any company with more than 300 workers wants to close and hence retrench or lay off, it has to take permission from the government. They invariably get it. Even this nominal protection measure is being questioned. There is no evidence to prove that this clause has affected investment in India.

On the other hand, in 2007, 10 top executives in India earned Rs 193. 85 crore while, according to the Arjun Sengupta Committee report, 77 per cent of people earn just Rs 20 a day in this country. India tops the list of Swiss bank accounts worth $1.4 trillion as per the Tax Jubilee Network 2005. This is black money taken from India. Why not bring it back to India? In public sector banks, non-performing assets are worth Rs 3,00,000 crore and these are companies which have made banks sick. Why not get back all that money? Regulations should help get redistributive justice for everyone. The second Labour Commission had recommended that every retrenched employee get 90 days' salary per year multiplied by the days of service. The law now provides just 15 days' salary.

In China, if someone loses his job in sick government units, it is the government's responsibility to provide 50 per cent wages per year till it is able to find him an alternative job. It may apply this to private companies too.

If you are a country with a surplus population, throwing you in the Arabian Sea is certainly not a solution. It is a governance issue. The government can't simply wash its hands off this. Profits should be for people and not over people. Surely companies can allow people to sit at home for six months with wages till they get another job? Mahatma Gandhi said that industry is a trust and the employer is a father who should look after workers as his children. Today it is convenient to forget all this ideal of trusteeship.

'There's no evidence that lack of flexibility has hit investment.

Also, even the nominal pay for firing workers has been kept at a mere 15 days of wages'

HMAHADEVAN

Deputy General Secretary AITUC

Marx is back

2008-10-22T21:51:00.002+05:30

Marx is back

Hasan Suroor

LONDON: With capitalism in crisis, Karl Marx has become fashionable again in the West. Das Kapital, his seminal work, is set to become a best-seller in Europe.

In his native Germany, copies of Das Kapital are reported to be “flying off the shelves” as failed bankers and free-market economists try to make sense of the global economic meltdown.

Jorn Schutrumpf, head of the Berlin publishing house Dietz, is reported as having said that the sales of the works of Marx, and Friedrich Engels, have trebled. “Marx is fashionable again…We have a new generation of readers who are rattled by the financial crisis and have to recognise that neo-liberalism has turned out to be a false dream,” he told The Times.

A dramatic rise has been reported in the number of visitors to Marx’s birthplace in Trier. And film-maker Alexander Kluge is planning to turn Das Kapital into a movie.

Western leaders who once sneered at Marx’s dense tome, breezily dismissing it as a “doorstop,” have been seen flaunting Das Kapital in recent weeks. French President Nicolas Sarkozi has been spotted “flicking through” it, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbruck has said nice things about it, and even the Pope has praised the book for its “great analytical” quality.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams recalled Marx’s analysis of capitalism , saying: “Marx long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves.”

Free-market cheerleaders such as The Times and The Daily Telegraph have become interested in Marx. There has been a wave of soul-searching analyses of whether he was right, after all.

Magnet as therapy

2008-10-22T21:51:00.001+05:30

Magnet as therapy

WASHINGTON: The U.S. government has approved the first non-invasive brain stimulator to treat depression — a device that beams magnetic pulses through the skull.

If it sounds like science-fiction, well, those woodpecker-like pulses trigger small electrical charges that spark brain cells to fire. Yet it does not cause the risks of surgically implanted electrodes or the treatment of last resort, shock therapy.

Called transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS, this gentler approach is not for everyone. The Food and Drug Administration approved Neuronetics’ NeuroStar therapy only for patients who had no relief from their first antidepressant, offering them a different option than trying pill after pill.

“We’re opening up a whole new area of medicine,” says Mark George of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, who helped pioneer use of TMS in depression. “There’s a whole field now that’s moving forward of non-invasive electrical stimulation of the brain.”

While there is a big need for innovative approaches — at least one in five depression patients is treatment-resistant — the question is just how much benefit TMS offers. The FDA cleared the prescription-only NeuroStar based on data that found patients did modestly better when treated with TMS than when they unknowingly received a sham treatment that mimicked the magnet. It was a study fraught with statistical questions that concerned the agency’s own advisers.

For a clearer answer, the National Institutes of Health has an independent study under way now that tracks 260 patients and may have the initial results by next year.

Quantifying the benefit is key, considering the price tag. TMS is expected to cost $6,000 to $10,000, depending on how many treatments a patient needs, says Philip Janicak of Rush University Medical Centre in Chicago, who helped lead the study. That is far more expensive than medication yet thousands of dollars cheaper than invasive depression devices.

Neuroscientists have been using TMS for years as a research tool in brain studies. Zap a powerful magnet over a certain spot on the head — where motion is controlled — and someone’s arm can suddenly, involuntarily, lash out. Beyond the “wow” factor, magnetized pulses were triggering brain activity.

The question was how to harness that activity in a way that might improve disease. TMS also is being studied in stroke rehabilitation and other brain disorders. — AP

Delhi HC to govt: Homosexuality is not a disease

2008-10-21T23:55:00.000+05:30

Delhi HC to govt: Homosexuality is not a disease
21 Oct 2008, 0200 hrs IST,TNN

NEW DELHI: Irritated by the government's contradictory and unscientific stand on the issue of homosexuality, the Delhi High Court on Monday told the government that the homosexual trait in a human being cannot be termed as a "disease" and objected to the contention that if legalised, homosexuality would bring "devastation" to society.

"Show us one report which says that it is a disease. A WHO paper says that it is not a disease but you are describing it as a disease. It is an accepted fact that it is a main vehicle that causes (AIDS) disease but it is not a disease in itself," a Bench headed by Chief Justice A P Shah remarked in response to Additional Solicitor General P P Malhotra's harping on the point that homosexuality was a disease that is responsible for the spread of AIDS in the country.

"AIDS is already spreading in the country and if gay sex is legalised then people on the street would start indulging in such practises saying that the High Court has given approval for it. Legalising it would send a wrong message to our youth," Malhotra maintained, at which HC took strong exception and said the matter (pertaining to legalising gay sex) was still under consideration and the Centre should not make such a submission.

The Court was hearing a bunch of petitions filed by gay rights activists seeking decriminalisation of gay sex among consenting adults which, at present, is an offence. Section 377 of Indian Penal Code provides a punishment upto life imprisonment for indulging in gay sex.

Continuing with its opposition the government described homosexuality as "a most indecent behaviour" in society, pointing out that homosexuals comprise just 0.3% of the population and the interest of rest 99.7% population "cannot be compromised" just to accommodate their rights.

"Every citizen has the right to lead a decent and moral life in society and the right would be violated if such behaviour (gay sex) is legalised in the country," Malhotra said arguing that an amendment in section 377 would mean subsequent tinkering around with marriage and divorce laws of each community as all have sodomy as a ground for divorce. The ASG claimed even section 375, which pertains to rape, would need an amendment to change definition of "consent" if homosexuality was legalised.

"Our constitution does not talk about sexual orientation. We cannot impose other countries' constitutions on us. Our moral and ethical values are different," the ASG said while concluding Centre's arguments.

Meanwhile, an independent party in the PIL, B P Singhal, who is opposing decriminalisation of gay sex started his arguments and described homosexuality as an "evil" exported from western countries.

"If the court allows such acts then it would lead to male prostitution and the epidemic of AIDS would further spread. We would no longer be a country called India if Section 377 is removed and such behaviour (gay sex) is allowed," Advocate H V Sharma appearing for the political leader said.

The Court, however, instructed him to "stick" to legal issues involved in the case and not raise political ones. Earlier, gay rights activists had contended that the government, by not decriminalising homosexuality, was infringing upon their fundamental right to equality on grounds of morality.

Airlines need to cut fleet, more jobs to stay airborne

2008-10-21T22:11:00.000+05:30

Airlines need to cut fleet, more jobs to stay airborne

SURAJEET DAS GUPTA, MANISHA SINGHAL & ANIRBAN CHOWDHURY New Delhi/Mumbai, 20 October

Jet Airways' aborted plan to cut 1,900 staff partially reflected the crisis in the aviation industry. Analysis by

Business Standard shows that Indian carriers will need to cut their domestic fleet and manpower by a fifth in the next few months to fully align themselves with the slowdown in passenger growth.

Domestic carriers, which include Jet Airways, Kingfisher Airlines, Air India (for aircraft that fly domestic routes) and the low-cost carriers, have a combined fleet of over 300 aircraft. Some 60 aircraft will have to be withdrawn from this fleet if airlines hope to increase the passenger load factor (PLF) a measure of capacity utilisation in aircraft to around 80 per cent, which is required to break even.

The average PLF over the last few months has been 50 per cent. According to the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, in the opening busyseason month of October, the average PLF was 60 to 65 per cent, at least 10 per cent less than last years numbers. A decrease in capacity by 20 per cent on key routes assuming air fares and demand are constant would lead to PLF rising 20 per cent.

Airlines have already cut passenger capacity by 10 to 15 per cent according to aircraft manufacturer Boeing in the last few months but that, of course, is not enough.

The carriers also need to cut manpower by around 12,000 people out of the 60,000 employees working in domestic aviation if they are to stop making losses. The number is based on the fact that the average employeeto-aircraft ratio in India is1: 200 (this number might be slightly skewed because stateowned Air India's ratio is 1: 300).

In fact, analysts said, the job cuts need to be higher if the airlines want to achieve global aviation standards of 150 employees per aircraft.

"The cut has to come from full-service carriers because low-cost carriers have only 100-odd surplus employees," said a senior executive with alow-cost carrier.

Considering the strong opposition from political parties of all hues to Jet's plans to lay off unconfirmed cabin crew, carriers are, however, unlikely to push through such amajor cutback.

Domestic air traffic continues to decline

BS REPORTER New Delhi, 20 October

The Indian aviation industry continues to witness a slump with domestic air traffic in September decreasing by almost 20 per cent compared with the same month in the previous year. In August, traffic had decreased by 16 per cent, as against that in the same month a year ago.

Traffic for the July-September quarter saw a decrease of around 17 per cent compared with the same quarter last year.

Industry experts said that apart from the excess capacity in the industry, the slowdown in demand even in the peak season was a result of the recent fare hikes of 10-15 per cent which was announced by several full service carriers.

Experts added that there was an excess capacity of 20 per cent or around 60 aircraft, which needs to be taken out before there is a match between demand and supply. As a result, more than 300 domestic flights will have to go out of operations.

"Airlines have already cut down capacity by 25-30 per cent starting from June. They need to cut down another 20 per cent," said an industry expert.

The rationalisation in capacity has helped Kingfisher Red, formerly Simplifly Deccan. Kingfisher Red's loads shot to more than 51 per cent, around 32 percentage points up from

AUGUST 2008 SEPTEMBER 2008 Airline Marketshare Load Marketshare Load

Indian 18.0 56.2 18.1 53.3 Jet Airways 24.2 68.3 23.6 64.0 JetLite 9.3 63 8.9 58.8 Deccan 10.2 39 12.3 51.7 Kingfisher 14.8 59 15.3 56.7 SpiceJet 8.5 56.8 8.0 50.5 Paramount 1.7 69 1.7 62.0 GoAir 2.7 70 1.8 57.0 IndiGo 10.3 62 10.1 56.0

September 2008: 2.6 million passengers

September 2007: 3.3 million passengers

July-Sept quarter 2008: 8.6 million passengers

July-Sept quarter 2007: 10.2 million passengers

the last month. It has been able to capture 12.3 per cent share of the domestic market, up from its August marketshare of 10.2 per cent. IndiGo, which had surpassed Kingfisher Red by capturing 10.3 per cent of the market share in August, slipped to 10.1 per cent in September.

"After turning to Kingfisher Red, which is just an extension of Kingfisher Airlines, we cut off a lot of excess flab in terms of flights. This has resulted in the higher loads," said a Kingfisher executive.

Apart from Kingfisher Red, every other airline has seen a fall in loads in September compared with the previous month.

>>>Govt mulls policies to counter global crisis

2008-10-21T00:06:00.000+05:30

Govt mulls policies to counter global crisis

SURAJEET DAS GUPTA &SIDDHARTH ZARABI New Delhi, 19 October

The government is discussing anumber of policy measures to insulate India from the impact of the global financial crisis including further banking reform, industrial de-control, auctioning all loss-making public sector units, foreign investment in retail, amending labour laws and notifying important pending legislation like the Delhi Rent Control Act.

These and other measures (see chart), sources said, have been put up for discussion by the government to ensure that the Indian economy returns to a trend growth rate of 9 per cent from the next financial year.

India recorded annual GDP growth of 9.4 per cent in 200506, 9.6 per cent the next year, and 9 per cent in 2007-08. Growth projections for the current year are markedly more cautious on account of lower expectations from agriculture, industry and services. In recent weeks, forecasters have revised estimates downwards. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy now pegs 2008-09 growth at 8.7 per cent, the National Council of Applied Economic Research at 7.8 per cent and Citigroup India at 7.4 per cent.

By implementing pending reforms and moving to liberalise newer areas of the economy, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government believes India can insulate itself from the biggest global crisis since the Great Depression of 1929.

The broad thinking is that the measures be introduced from next year onwards in a calibrated action with continuing monetary measures by the central bank. The steps, however, will be timed in tune with the investment and macro-economic environment.

Among the policy measures under discussion is allowing 100 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in green-field private rural-agricultural banks. Such institutions would be free to set up any number of branches in rural, semi-rural and semi-urban pockets, and in the process lend to farm and allied sectors.

It has also been suggested that such banks be allowed to take over regional rural banks and rural branches of public sector banks.

The government is also pushing for completing the process of selling 5 to 10 per cent equity in previously identified profit-making nonnavratna

public sector undertakings like hydro-power generator NHPC and Oil India. Navratna companies are profit-making stateowned companies that enjoy adegree of autonomy.

Similarly, the government has called for greater de-control of several industrial sectors, adding that no further tax incentives should be granted unless this takes place.

Among other policy changes under consideration is a modern bankruptcy law to facilitate the exit of failed managements.

A suggestion has also been made to allow foreign direct investment in multi-format retailing starting from food retailing. This suggestion comes with a rider that entrants set up wholesale outlets from which small, unorganised retailers can buy items for at least five years.

An idea has also been mooted to set up an independent environment regulator with complete autonomy and accountability for implementing environmental regulations.

EVEN as the Opposition vows that it is not going to let the government have an easy run of the current Lok Sabha session that resumed Friday and is scheduled to continue till November 21, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has written to the ministry of parliamentary affairs indicating the varying degree of importance various Bills should be given in the session.

Surf web to boost brain power

2008-10-19T23:36:00.000+05:30

Surf web to boost brain power

Priyanka Tikoo
Miami, Oct 19 (PTI) If you think that reading is the only way to stimulate your mind, think again, for a new study has suggested that surfing the Internet boosts the brain more than going through a book.

Researchers at California University have found that browsing the web triggers centres in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning, particularly in older and middle-aged adults.

In fact, the study, which looked at brain activity during web searches, resulted in a fascinating finding: Middle -aged to older people who know their way around the Internet had more stimulation of decision-making and complex reasoning areas of the brain than peers who were new to web surfing.

What's more is that reading didn't stimulate the same number of brain areas as Internet searching.

The first of its kind to access the impact of Internet searching of brain performance, the study is to appear in an upcoming issue of 'American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry', according to the University.

"The study results are encouraging, that emerging computerised technologies may have physiological effects and potential benefits for middle-aged and older adults.

"Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function," said lead researcher Dr Gary Small of the University's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behaviour.

He added: "A simple, everyday task like searching the web appears to enhance brain circuity in older adults, demonstrating that our brains are sensitive and can continue to learn as we grow older." PTI

90% pay cuts for Kingfisher trainee pilots

2008-10-19T18:20:00.001+05:30

90% pay cuts for Kingfisher trainee pilots

Senior Pilots Face Cutbacks Too

Manju V | TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mumbai: After Jet Airways, it’s now the turn of Kingfisher Airlines employees to face the heat. The airline has lined up a host of cost-cutting measures, a majority of which involves drastic salary cuts. The most affected will be the new lot of trainee co-pilots who not only have to go back to their stipend pay, but also be prepared for an uncertain future.
   A cost modelling study has shown that the airline has surplus pilots, athough the exact figure isn’t yet known. Unlike in the case of Jet Airways, the surplus pilots also include senior commanders on wide-bodied aircraft.
   “About 70 trainee pilots’ monthly salaries stand to come down from Rs 1.95 lakh (newly endorsed ATR/A320 pilots) and Rs 90,000 (trainees on probation) to a stipend of Rs 20,000 per month,’’ said an airline official who did not wish to be named.
   The cost-cutting will not be limited to the junior pilots and is slated to go all the way up to the wide-bodied A340 pilots as well. “About 14 commanders and 30 first officers who have been trained and endorsed on A340 aicraft will be losing Rs 1.20 lakh each from their monthly salaries as they will be moved down to the singleaisle 320 aircraft. Had they been allowed to continue on the A340, they would have drawn Rs 60,000 more per month after their endorsement and another Rs 60,000 after completing 500 hours of flying on the A340,’’ the official added.
   The airline, which was to launch its international operations in a big way this year, has scaled down its plans, leading to a surplus of senior pilots. “A hundred senior pilots trained on the A330 and A340 have been on the ground for the last seven months. They are being paid their salaries,’’ said an official.
   While no official letters have been sent out, officials say the final equations in the cost-cutting exercise will emerge soon. Although the Kingfisher spokesperson did not comment on the specifics of the exercise, a statement issued by the airline on Friday confirmed the salary cuts. “With a view to tiding over the ongoing turbulence in the aviation industry and keeping in mind the reduction in capacity deployed, Kingfisher Airlines has effected a downward revision in emoluments of a small pool of 50 trainee co-pilots. These trainee co-pilots will continue to remain on the payroll of the company and will all continue to enjoy and be able to avail of the full benefits and privileges that are available to employees of the company,’’ said the airline in its statement.

Slide in number of domestic fliers

Saurabh Sinha | TNN
   Rising fares have forced people in the metros and in big cities that have international airports, like Ahmedabad and Jaipur, to cut down on domestic air travel. Data compiled by the Airports Authority of India for July shows that the number of domestic fliers has nosedived in 25 big cities compared to the statistics available for July of last year. In Mumbai, the downturn is as much as 16.7%.In fact, DGCA figures for September show that domestic air travel has hit a five-year low of 27.19 lakh. P 8

‘Airline waiting to take tough decisions’

   It may be recalled that a couple of months back, Kingfisher Airlines had terminated the services of 300 of its employees from the non-operations area. “After the Jet Airways lay-off drama, salary cuts will find acceptance, though only grudgingly,’’ sources said, commenting on the general mood among cockpit crew.
   But what is of greater concern, according to airline sources, is the talk that the airline is just buying time to assess its financial burden before it takes tough decisions regarding surplus staff. “The newly endorsed pilots on A320s for instance have been told that they have an option to leave if they want to or continue with the stipend for a year. The company has decided to let go the costs incurred on their type-training, which works out to about Rs 25 lakh for one A320 endorsement. But in the present circumstances, it would be difficult to find another job,’’ said an airline source. “If the pilots decide to stay back then they will face the possibility of being sacked after a year or so if the company still finds them to among the surplus crew,’’ he added.
   There is distress among Kingfisher’s senior pilots as well. “The management has been giving preference to the senior pilots who came in from other airlines. They get picked up for A 340/330 endorsement and training much faster than those who have been with the airline since its inception. Loyalty is not rewarded here,’’ a senior pilot said.

Govt approach to meltdown will spell more trouble: Left

2008-10-17T21:03:00.001+05:30

Govt approach to meltdown will spell more trouble: Left

New Delhi, Oct 17 (PTI) Left parties today warned the Government that its approach to meet the global meltdown would push India into further trouble and dismissed suggestions that the problems confronting the aviation sector were related to oil prices.
Opposing what they called "cartelisation" by Jet Airways and Kingfisher, the CPI(M) and its allies said such a monopolistic move was against the interests of the people.

"The problems being faced by Jet Airways and Kingfisher are due to the global economic meltdown and not because of high aviation turbine fuel prices ... The real story is missing. It is due to offshore stocks ... In many places," CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury said.

He alleged that the aviation companies wanted the government to bail them out of their losses suffered in global meltdown.

"They want nationalisation of losses and privatisation of profits, which we will oppose tooth and nail," he said.

The Left leader also took serious objection to the "cartelisation" done by Jet and Kingfisher, who he claimed have 60 per cent share in the aviation market.

"Such cartelisation will not be allowed in any liberal democracy in the world," he said. PTI

SEZ Act termed anti-Constitution

2008-10-13T23:10:00.001+05:30

SEZ Act termed anti-Constitution

Staff Correspondent

‘It is against 21 laws enacted under Industrial Disputes Act’

Bijapur: The Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Act is against principals of the Constitution of India. It is an attempt to create a separate land in the State that would be out of government control, said advocate J. Kijjhar.

Speaking at a seminar on Special Economic Zone Act, 2005, organised by the Democratic Advocates Centre at Anjuman Law College here recently, he said the Act was against 21 laws enacted under Industrial Disputes Act of the Government of India.

Impact of Act

It would have an awful impact on the labour class as they would not have any job guarantee, and the tax paid by people would be misused for providing water, electricity, transport and other basic to industries, Mr. Kijjhar said.

Speaking on the social, political and economic impact of the Act, Raitha Krishi Karmika Sanghatane State secretary H. V. Diwakar said Nandigram and Singur agitations had proved that the Act was “anti-people”.

Anjuman Law College principal V.B. Masuthi presided over the seminar. Lecturers R.A. Patil, H.G. Mulla, B.T. Hattarki, K.M. Kudalagi and others were present.

Psychopath cannot escape punishment for murder: SC

2008-10-13T23:05:00.001+05:30

Psychopath cannot escape punishment for murder: SC

New Delhi (PTI): A psychopath cannot escape punishment for committing a murder on the grounds of abnormality of mind, the Supreme Court has ruled.

"Mere abnormality of mind or partial delusion, irresistible impulse or compulsive behaviour of a psychopath affords no protection under Section 84 (IPC)," a bench of Justices Arijit Pasayat and Mukundakam Sharma observed while dismissing the appeal of a murder convict Siddhapal Kamala Yadav.

Under Section 84 IPC, a person who commits murder under the unsoundness of the mind or lunacy can escape punishment if he/she is able to prove that the killing was committed in such a state of mind.

In the instant case, Yadav on July 19, 2002 killed the victim, Dilip Sitaram Chaudhary, at Ward No 14 of Civil Hospital, Jalgaon, where both of them were undergoing treatment for certain ailments.

Yadav is said to have killed Chaudhary with an iron stand used for administering glucose to patients when there was a power cut in the hospital.

A sessions court in Jalagaon sentenced Yadav to life imprisonment and the Bombay High Court upheld the conviction following which he appealed in the apex court.

Upholding the conviction, the apex court said the evidence on record furnished by two psychiatrists who appeared in court as witnesses, Satish Patil and Subhash Badgujar, indicated that Yadav was not suffering from any mental illness at the time of the offence.

Interdisciplinary centre planned at IISc.

2008-10-12T00:03:00.001+05:30

Interdisciplinary centre planned at IISc.

Divya Gandhi

It will be a radical departure from traditional academic structures

It will adopt a problem-solving approach

Plan being discussed with Sir Ratan Tata Trust

Bangalore: In the midst of the activity around its centenary celebrations, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) is working towards another milestone on its roadmap: a Rs. 2000-crore interdisciplinary centre that, according to scientists, could be the “biggest thing” to happen to the IISc., if not to science in India.

The Tata Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (TCIR), scheduled to come up within the IISc. campus in 2009, will be a “radical departure” from traditional academic structures with its “problem-solving” approach and close association with industry, academia and medical institutions, said Sanjay Biswas, Dean, Engineering, IISc.

The proposal for the TCIR is in the final stages of discussion with the Sir Ratan Tata Trust, which is likely to provide Rs. 400 crore to Rs. 500 crore as initial funding for the project. The rest of the long-term projected costs will be met from other sources, including industry.

“If all goes as planned, TCIR will be up by January 2009 and Ph.D. students will be admitted by June. It will be a ‘virtual’ centre to start with, but we will have a 300,000-square-feet centre within the IISc. campus by the end of next year,” added Prof. Biswas, who personally favours pink sandstone styled after Hampi architecture.

New approach

Its faculty, administration and infrastructure are to be “set in a free, boundary-less environment”, said Prof. Biswas. After months of deliberation, ten target problems have been identified within three broad focus areas: bio-molecular engineering; energy and material; and bridging technologies through information and communication engineering. “One of our target problems is to develop artificial retina through tissue and cell engineering with the ultimate goal of developing a complete system for artificial vision affordable by people. Another focus area is the use and design of clean energy, including hydrogen, solar and biofuel,” Prof. Biswas told The Hindu. Information and communication technology will be used to create services for emergency and distress diagnosis, and messaging for the elderly and for people with disability, he added.

The TCIR will have between 60 and 70 faculty members, all recruited on a renewable contract basis, and drawn from within the IISc., from industry and from universities. As much as 30 per cent of the faculty could be drawn from universities abroad, said Prof. Biswas. The centre will accommodate 300 students to begin with.

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After 19 yrs, man gets job back, with benefits

2008-10-08T22:46:00.000+05:30

After 19 yrs, man gets job back, with benefits

Justice delayed is not always justice denied. Nineteen years after a man was thrown out of his Rs 130 a month job, the Supreme Court has ordered his reinstatement with the benefit of continuous service.

A Sankaralingam had joined the New India Assurance Company in 1986 as a part-time sweeper-cum-waterman. Three years later, the company asked him to stop coming to work after he requested he be regularised.

Part-time or full-time, a workman is entitled to the benefit of continuous service if he/she has regularly worked for 240 days in a year, a bench headed by Justice Tarun Chatterjee ruled. Such a worker cannot be removed without complying with the mandatory provisions of Section 25 F of the Industrial Disputes Act.

No workman who has been in continuous service for not less than a year shall be retrenched until he/she has been given one month’s notice in writing indicating the reasons for retrenchment and the period of notice has expired, or the workman has been paid in lieu of the notice, the wages for the period, the section says.

Sankaralingam’s re-instatement order is likely to benefit several part-time workers who would be entitled to avail benefits as workmen under the Industrial Act.

The court said the definition of workman under the Act did not make any distinction between full-time and part-time employee. The Act did not say that only a person employed full time will be said to be a workman.

“What is required is that the person should be employed for hire to discharge the work manual, skilled or unskilled in any industry,” the court said.

Interestingly, Sankaralingam was hired as a part-time employee of the company and was paid just Rs 130 per month. His agreement required him to work two hours, but he used to put in five every day. He was removed from service in March 1989 when he expressed his wish to become a permanent employee.

The Industrial Tribunal had in 1998 rejected Sankaralingam’s plea and held that he was not a workman under the Industrial Tribunal Act that extended protection to the workmen of an industry against any illegal removal from job.

But the Madras High Court ordered his reinstatement with full back-wages but left the issue of his regularisation open to be considered by the employer in accordance with the law. Now, the apex court has dismissed the company’s appeal and ordered Sankaralingam’s reinstatement.

Death of the American Dream: Indian kills family of five, self in LA

2008-10-08T22:44:00.000+05:30

Death of the American Dream: Indian kills family of five, self in LA

8 Oct 2008, 0009 hrs IST, CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA,TNN

WASHINGTON: Multiple gunshots echoed in the upscale home of an Indian family in a quiet, gated, suburban Los Angeles community last weekend, echoing the troubled times in America. ( Watch )

When police turned up on Monday morning after calls from a concerned neighbour waiting for a carpool ride, they found the body of 45-year old Karthik Rajaram, an unemployed financial advisor, lying in one room with a handgun he had used to shoot himself dead.

With him lay his two youngest sons Arjuna (7) and Ganesha (12), both shot dead. In different rooms across the house they found the bodies of Karthik’s wife Subasri (39), his mother-in-law Indra Ramasesham (69), and his eldest son Krishna (19). They all appeared to have been shot to death by Karthik Rajaram.

Police also found two suicide notes – one for the cops and one for extended family and friends -- and a will. In them, Rajaram he spoke of his financial difficulties and took responsibility for killing his family members, police said.

Police did not elaborate on the contents except to suggest that Rajaram appeared to be in dire financial straits.

''This is a perfect American family behind me that has absolutely been destroyed,'' LAPD Deputy Chief Michel Moore told reporters. ''It is critical to step up and recognize we are in some pretty troubled times.''

Rajaram had an MBA in finance from University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and formerly worked for PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Sony Pictures. But he had been unemployed for several months, according to local media reports citing authorities.

Investigators also determined that he was at least the part-owner of a financial holding company, SKGL LLC, which was incorporated in Nevada, ostensibly to hold his family assets.

The family appears to have been well-off at one time. According to the Los Angeles Times, they sold their home in Northridge in 2006 for $750,000, making a sizeable profit on a home they purchased in 1997 for $274,000. They had also taken out two loans for $241,400.

Rajaram once made more than $1.2 million in a London-based venture fund before he ran out of luck playing the stock market, reports said. A 2001 article in The Daily Telegraph of London, under the headline ''Bust, but big bucks for the big boys,'' called Rajaram a ''winner'' in a deal for NanoUniverse, a LA- and London-based venture fund taken public on the London Stock Exchange. For a 12,500-pound investment, Rajaram, one of the company's founders, received 875,000 pounds -- or about $1.2 million in 2001 dollars -- after a voluntary liquidation, the newspaper reported.

Although the family rented their current 2800-sq foot home, they lived a typical upper class life. They had two cars, a Chevy Suburban and a Lexus SUV and they reportedly paid their rent on time.

The incident sent shock waves through the neighbourhood, the larger Indian community and American financial world on a day the monetary world saw yet another bloodbath. Indians are widely known and recognized as the most successful ethnic community in the U.S with the highest per capita income among all segments of the population, including Whites.

But the country is now starting to hear of many hard luck stories, including among Indians, although nothing like this. And not in the City of Angels, far removed from the frenzied financial world of New York.

It wasn’t immediately clear if Rajaram’s extreme action stemmed from the ongoing economic turmoil, but even the police, unusually, referred to the troubled times. And as the story burnt the wires, the online community debated the incident heatedly.

''All the talk of bailouts for these big financial companies take the front page on all the papers, but the impact of the economic crisis on individuals is sometimes overlooked. This is a sad and tragic reminder of how quickly people can spiral into a horrible place,'' one blogger lamented.

Neighbours said the Rajarams were a quiet, decent family who pretty much kept to themselves and did not socialize much. The eldest son Krishna, a Fulbright scholar majoring in business economics at his father’s alma mater UCLA, appeared to be visiting home at the time of the incident.

Local school authorities said the two younger kids were also extremely bright and the parents had been very much involved in their education. The family did not appear to be particularly troubled, although some neighbors told reporters that Rajaram was pretty intense.

According to the police, there was no evidence that Rajaram had sought help from mental health professionals. However, the context of the letters and the fact Rajaram had purchased the handgun as recently as September 16 indicated that his actions were ''premeditated,'' they said.

''He had become despondent over his financial situation,'' Deputy Chief Moore related. In one of his letters, he talked of two options: taking his own life or taking his own life and that of his family. ''He talked himself into the second strategy,'' Moore said.

One of the neighbours reported that Rajaram had spoken to her twice in the last two weeks asking whether she would be home this past weekend. He urged her to keep her side windows shut because he had heard of burglaries in the area. He seemed nervous -- shaking, pacing and taking notes on a notepad as he spoke to her, she told the LA Times.

She surmised after the bloody massacre that he was trying to have her close her windows so that she wouldn't hear anything.

Apparently, no one did, because it was not until Monday when another neighbour rang the Rajarams' bell to remind Subasri, who worked at a local pharmacy, about the carpool ride did the tragic incident come to light.

Science of happiness

2008-10-08T22:28:00.001+05:30

POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Science of happiness

By Marnell Jameson, LA Times

Though many people think happiness is elusive, scientists have actually pinned it down and know how to get it.

I would be happier if I made more money, found the perfect mate, lost 10 pounds or moved to a new house.

Happiness is genetic. You can’t change how happy you are any more than you can change how tall you are.

Answers: False, false and false. If recent scientific research on happiness, and there has been quite a bit, has proved anything, it’s that happiness is not a goal. It’s a process. Although our tendency to be happy or not is partly inborn, it’s also partly within our control. And, perhaps more surprising, happiness brings success, not the other way around. Though many people think happiness is elusive, scientists have actually pinned it down and know how to get it.

For years, many in the field of psychology saw the science of happiness as an oxymoron. “We got no respect,” says Ed Diener, University of Illinois, who began studying happiness in 1981. “Critics said you couldn’t study happiness because you couldn’t measure it.” In the mid-1990s, he and a few other researchers started to prove the naysayers wrong. As a result, Americans now have an abundance of consumer books, academic articles, journals and associations to help them find happiness.

Christine Cardone, executive editor of psychology books for Wiley-Blackwell, whose titles include Diener’s forthcoming book, points to 2000 as the tipping point: Happiness science began to flood society with new, positive ways of thinking. That year, Martin Seligman, then-president of the American Psychological Assosiation, started the positive psychology movement, which focuses on what makes people mentally healthy. That concept got out to the media, spawning more interest and research. Meanwhile, neuroscientists were discovering better ways to measure what’s going on in the brain.

Among the major findings of the last decade is that the pursuit of happiness is a worthy cause, Diener says.

“Happiness doesn’t just feel good. It’s good for you and for society. Happy people are more successful, have better relationships, are healthier and live longer.”

And if that doesn’t make you happy, here’s more happy news: Around the world, happiness is on the rise. The fact that happiness and our understanding of it are on the rise bode well. “In the future, more people will understand the nature of happiness and its process,” says Dan Baker, who founded the life enhancement programme at Canyon Ranch in Tucson and is the author of What Happy Women Know. “They will understand that they have to take an active role if they want it.” Apparently, more people around the world are getting that message. “It’s true,” Seligman says. “We’re happier. And more happiness in the world is a great thing.”

Japan struggles with suicides

2008-10-08T22:23:00.001+05:30

Japan struggles with suicides

By Chris Hogg, BBC

Japan accepts that it has a problem with suicides but struggles to find a solution to combat it...

Earlier this year the Japanese government released the results of a survey which suggested that one in five men and women in the country had seriously thought of taking their own life.

Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the industrialised world. On average around ninety people kill themselves in Japan every day. In past years the suicide rate peaked each time the country's economy fell into recession.

Now that Japan's government has reported one quarter of negative growth, and signalled it is likely there are more to follow, there are fears of further increases in the number of people taking their own lives.

Many of those who choose to kill themselves go to Tojimbo Cliffs whose stone columns rise 25 metres above the Sea of Japan. Each evening, a retired policeman, Yukio Shige, patrols the cliffs looking for those he thinks might be planning to jump. If he suspects someone is contemplating suicide he approaches them and starts a conversation, hoping to change their mind.

“For a lot of them it’s a cry for help,” he says. “They are really hoping someone will stop them before they take their own lives.” Sometimes grown men burst into tears in front of him, he says. “I say to them 'You must be in a lot of pain, tell me what happened.” He is a volunteer. His group offers help and support to those he saves from the cliff edge.

He has saved around a 150 people who had planned to kill themselves, many more men than women. Often their problems are to do with work.

“Takanori,” a young man in his mid-20s who asked not to have his real name used, is one of them. A few months ago he came to the cliffs intending to throw himself into the sea after losing his job. Standing on the cliff edge, he recalls what drove him to such desperation.

“I went to the unemployment office, but there was only training and help for older people,” he says. “People of my age were supposed to cope with this difficult situation alone. There was no help for me at all.” It was not always like this. Going to work for a Japanese company used to be like joining a family. You worked there your whole life. But in today’s harsher economic climate, that is no longer the case. “This means there's a lot more working poor, a lot more who are worried about losing their job, a lot more people stressed out that they might lose their job,” says Professor Jeff Kingston from Temple University in Tokyo.

He points out that the lack of adequate mental health services and a growing number of elderly people here, an age group more prone to take their own lives than others, are to blame too. But if, as most economists believe, Japan is in recession already, then any spike in suicides this time could be worse than before.

The internet makes it easier to find new ways to kill yourself. For instance, it is not hard to find instructions for how to make lethal poison gas from household cleaning products. Hundreds of people have used this method to kill themselves in Japan this year.

Japan accepts that it has a problem with suicides but struggles to find a solution to combat it.

The US' enterprise depends on exporting weapons to nations that do not need them.

2008-10-08T22:22:00.001+05:30

Making sense of $700 billion

By James Carroll, International Herald Tribune

The US' enterprise depends on exporting weapons to nations that do not need them.

How much is 700 billion? The mind registers the number with such imprecision as to make it meaningless. One blogger proposed this way of grasping the figure: As a stack of $100 bills, it would reach 54 miles high. But who can imagine that? On the other hand, someone at the Smithsonian once calculated that counting to one billion, at the rate of one digit per second, would take 30 years. By that scale, counting to 700 billion would take 21,000 years.

Come again? That stretch of time takes us back to the cave painters of Lascaux, the glacial age, the last Neanderthals. The mind is not helped.

By a nice coincidence, though, the US financial rescue package of $700 billion duplicates a number that was also in the news last week — the Pentagon budget. In the fiscal year just beginning, the US defence department will spend $607 billion on normal military costs, and an additional $100 billion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But for the coming year, $700 billion is the Pentagon’s nice round number (this includes neither Homeland Security nor intelligence costs).

Step back. All of last week’s hand-wringing hoopla over the emergency bailout stands in stark contrast to the utter indifference with which politicians approved an equivalent layout for the military — an approval so routine that it was ignored in the press and by the public.

Historical

Barack Obama has no issue with current defence expenditures. The annual American military budget is at least 10 times larger than the military budgets of Russia and China; it is 20 times larger than the entire budget of the US state department. But last week’s demonstration of anguish over the historic financial rescue figure throws an entirely new light on the nearly identical number that will fund the Pentagon for one measly year.

This is not a matter merely of comparison. Here is the question that no one is asking about America’s grave financial crisis: By fuelling corporate profits, jobs, and private-sector growth for two generations with massive over-investment in the military, has the United States gutted the real worth of its economy?

One needn’t be an economist to know that spending money on war planes, missiles and exotic weapons systems, not to mention combat operations, creates far less social capital than spending on education, bridges, mass transit, new forms of energy — even the arts.

The genius of America’s most brilliant minds has been yoked for more than half a century to the invention of ways to kill and destroy. What if those minds had been put to work imagining alternative futures — the rescue of the environment, the ending of disease and poverty, the artistic fulfilment of new media, the teaching of children? It’s a question as old as Eisenhower (“The cost of one modern heavy bomber,” he said in 1953, “is this: A modern brick school in more than 30 cities.” Leaving office, he said, “We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.” That’s us.)

Unnecessary wars

The $700 billion bailout aims to rescue the world’s economy, but that, too, raises questions about the Pentagon’s prior effect there. Because America has put military invention at the heart of its enterprise, the exporting of weapons to countries that do not need them and cannot afford them has become a main mode of America’s being in the world. (The Arms Control Association reports that in 2007 the Pentagon sent $40 billion worth of arms to two dozen nations; that is double the 2007 appropriation for US foreign aid.) Unneeded weapons spark unnecessary wars.

That the majority of humans are in dire straits and that the planet itself is groaning are issues treated like givens of nature, yet they are results of the ways creativity is channelled and resources are shared. $700 billion for rescue. $700 billion for war. Something is wrong with this picture, and last week that coincidence of numbers told us what.

America's financial Pearl Harbour: But no war on hunger

2008-10-08T22:21:00.001+05:30

America's financial Pearl Harbour: But no war on hunger

By Devinder Sharma

After the US meltdown, it is now the turn of the countries of the European Union to feel the heat.

The smile has gone. The markets are again plunging, even after the US Congress gave its belated approval to the $700 billion bailout package that the Bush administration has worked out to prop up the failing market economy. With American tax-payers pumping in $1.8 trillion in the past one year to provide a life-saving shot to the failing markets, investors couldn’t have asked for anything more.

Three of America’s top five investment banks had disappeared. The remaining two — Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs — have now been converted into commercial banks. After the US meltdown, it is now the turn of the European Union countries to feel the heat. In the week following the mayhem in Wall Street, central banks in Britain, European Union, Japan, Switzerland, Canada, Russia and India have pumped in $600 billion in multiple rescue acts. Ironical, isn’t it? The private sector giants are ultimately rescued by government treasuries.

Expressing urgency that “government’s intervention is not only warranted, but essential,” the US President George Bush offered the mother of all bailouts — seeking approval for a $700 billion bailout package. It sure is the ‘mother of all bailout’ packages considering the legislation making it categorically clear that the measures are non-reviewable and cannot be challenged “in a court of law or any administrative agency”.

The political urgency with which the US government and for that matter governments elsewhere have come to the rescue of the financial system from getting worse exposes their double standards. The $700 billion that the United States is spending to shore up the balance sheets of failing behemoths could have wiped out hunger (FAO estimates 854 million people go to bed hungry every night) from the face of the planet. The additional $1.1 trillion that the US has spent in the past one year could have pulled out the world’s estimated two billion poor from perpetual poverty and that too on a long-term sustainable basis.

In short, the money that the US has been spending could have wiped out the last traces of poverty, hunger, malnutrition and squalor from the face of the earth. Warren Buffet sounds so hollow when he compares the collapse of the Wall Street with Pearl Harbour: “It is not like Pearl harbour where you could look at what happened with your own eyes and decide you had to do something that day. This is sort of an economic Pearl harbour we’re going through”.

Warren Buffet is probably not aware that the world is silently living through tens of Pearl Harbours every day. An estimated 2,042 people died and another 1,282 were wounded in Pearl Harbour whereas the UN estimates that 24,000 people are dying with each passing day in an endless wait for their next morsel of food. I am not defending the attack on Pearl Harbour, but what the financial leaders need to know is that a thousand mutinies are being enacted every day in the developing world.

And if the global leaders, who met at the 63rd session of the UN General Assembly last fortnight, were honest enough, a similar urgency could be demonstrated in tackling global poverty and hunger. There would have been no need for the United Nations to provide a cover-up for their collective guilt in the form of Millennium Development Goals. Poverty would have been banished. Hunger could have also been relegated to the pages of history.

Look at the market mantra: When the going is good, the government must step back and allow the bull a mad run. And when the collapse comes, the losses are picked up by the taxpayers, whose savings actually line the pockets of the corrupt CEOs of multinational corporates and huge financial institutions. The trillion dollar questions that arise are: why should the governments intervene? Aren’t the markets supposed to be self-regulatory and self-contained? And if not, does it not mean that capitalism is not the right model of economic growth?

In India, pressure is on to disinvest the remaining public sector companies: pressure is also building up to privatise the nationalised banks. The arguments are the same, you have often heard them. Every economist worth the name will argue in favour of privatisation of the nationalised banks. And when the private sector goes bust or the markets explode, it is invariably the governments that are expected to nationalise them.

Come to think of it, the $85 billion bailout for AIG by the US government is the biggest nationalisation in history.
Rescuing AIG was crucial because its failure posed a much bigger threat to the entire financial system. The total $1.8 trillion that is being pumped in to write-off the losses is in reality what will keep the markets alive. No wonder, Prof Nouriel Roubini of New York University’s Stern School of Business had once called it: “privatisation of profit and socialisation of losses”.

India, remapped

2008-10-08T22:07:00.000+05:30

India, remapped

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Bibek Debroy Posted: Oct 08, 2008 at 0034 hrs IST

Not long ago, the World Bank increased India’s poverty figures by jacking up the international (purchasing power parity-based) poverty line to $1.25 per person per day. (ADB increased it to $1.35.) So there are 456 million (41.6 per cent of population) poor people. The official Planning Commission figure continues to be 27.5 per cent of population, say 300 million people today, depending on what population figure one takes. The National Commission for Enterprises in Unorganised Sector (NCEIUS) had a figure of 237 million for poor and extremely poor. Since assumptions differ, one can’t quite match these estimates. However, they all originate with the NSS large sample of 2004-05. Hence, these figures are somewhat dated. With income and consumption growth, even if this growth is unevenly distributed across segments of the population, poverty figures must be lower today, as a ratio, if not in absolute terms. Until we have another NSS large sample, perhaps in 2009-10, we won’t quite know. For the moment, let’s assume there are around 250 million poor people, regardless of whether we are in 2004-05 or 2008. Given the present thrust of public policy, most analysis of income (or expenditure) poverty has attempted to correlate poverty with collective identities like SC/ST/OBC/religious status.

But why are we interested in such poverty numbers? Because we are driven by equity considerations and want to do something for poverty alleviation, so that growth becomes inclusive and divides and disparities are reduced. Hence, we have a fleet of anti-poverty programmes, led by so-called flagship schemes. The sub-conscious is probably at work in use of the expression “flagship”. A fleet is led by a single flagship. If there are several flagships, it is reasonable to deduce we don’t quite know what to do about poverty (beyond trickle-down effects of growth) and are therefore firing several pellets from a shotgun, in the hope that something somewhere will stick. Broadly, these anti-poverty programmes are either collective or individual. Bharat Nirman and Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana are instances of collective interventions, since they build physical or social infrastructure perceived to be public goods. In contrast, there are programmes like National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG) or Indira Awaas Yojana, directed towards the individual poor person. They provide private goods, not public ones, but subsidise the poor. No one can question the idea of subsidising the poor, provided we know who they are. This has proved to be an intractable problem since 1991, and even before.

Who are these 250 million people? The question shouldn’t be ducked. Nor should we avoid the question by suggesting all SC/ST/ OBC/Muslims are poor and all non-SC/ST/OBC/Muslims are non-poor. There is a double problem with any surveys on poverty, the NSS included. First, data become dated. Second, and more important, these are surveys, not censuses. Knowing there are 250 million poor people isn’t of much use, unless we can ascribe names, faces and addresses to these numbers. This identification has also been a problem when some states have undertaken their own surveys on poverty. So we resorted to decentralised identification through surveys during the Ninth Plan (1997-2002), especially for rural India. A family was poor if its annual family income was less than Rs 20,000, it didn’t own a TV or fridge and its land-holding was less than 2 hectares. The Tenth Plan (2002-07) refined this to 13 parameters for rural India (land-holding, type of house, clothing, food security, sanitation, consumer durables, literacy status, labour force, means of livelihood, status of children, type of indebtedness, reasons for migration) and seven parameters for urban India (roof, floor, water, sanitation, education level, type of employment and status of children), with states like Kerala, Haryana and Maharashtra adding their own variations.

Such decentralised identification based on ownership of physical assets (and similar variables) sounds eminently sensible, particularly because panchayats are involved. But it hasn’t worked that way. Consider how the system works. On each parameter, you get a score. Each parameter has a weight and the scores are thus aggregated to obtain an overall BPL (below the poverty line) index value. No matter how decentralised the survey, this is bound to be perceived as a top-down approach, since choice of parameters, choice of weights and formulae for aggregation are all inherently subjective decisions. For every method suggested, an equally plausible alternative is possible. This is the stuff one writes academic papers with, not use it for framing public policy on such a sensitive issue, where a double mistake is possible — identifying poor as non-poor and identifying non-poor as poor. It is always best if one can figure out some method of self-identification. Old people belong to a different category. Of the 77 million old (more than 60) people in India, 25 million have been estimated to be BPL. With overlap across the two categories, there are 34 million widows.

There are schemes like Annapurna for these segments, of doubtful delivery value. But let’s leave that aside. We are still left with around 200 million poor people and the recent Eleventh Plan (2007-12) document uses 2004-05 data to estimate there are 94 million working poor, around 69.5 million in rural India and 24.5 million in urban India. If we can get this 94 million to self-identify itself as poor, we will solve the subjectivity and non-transparency problem in identifying BPL. We do possess such a mechanism in NREG, in existence in 200 districts since February 2006. Let’s ignore the old debate about whether NREG was a sensible idea to start with, opportunity costs of resources, non-creation of productive assets and corruption and leakage (documented by CAG). Through NREG, 27.8 million households (de facto individuals) have self-identified themselves as poor. However, this is really for 330 districts (130 districts were added in 2007-08). Since all districts will now be covered, this process of self-identification will therefore cover the worst of the poor in that segment of 94 million.

The rural development ministry prides itself on NREG being IT-savvy, through involvement of NIC and TCS (especially in Andhra). Since Indian IT/ITES companies have been providing software services to the rest of the world, shouldn’t their services be used in India too? That NREG database can be used to issue biometric BPL cards, so that subsidies can be targeted to only the poor. This column has counted that as PM, Manmohan Singh has mentioned subsidy-targeting 22 times. Since flags typically fly from the admiral’s ship, how about the PMO accepting this as a true flagship programme?

The writer is a noted economist

Men find women's bodies more attractive in winter

2008-09-28T17:51:00.000+05:30

Sci. & Tech.

Men find women's bodies more attractive in winter

London (PTI): The fair sex might find it hard to believe but a new study has claimed that women's bare flesh in winter is a bigger turn-on for men.

A team at Wroclaw University in Poland has carried out the study and found that men actually find women's bodies more attractive in the winter -- a revelation they claim might have an impact on mate choice and on levels of adultery.

According to researchers, though there is no clear explanation for the seasonal variation, one theory can be that fewer female bodies are on display in winter and so the rarity makes them more attractive, The Sunday Telegraph reported.

In fact, they came to the conclusion after carrying out an experiment on 114 men who were asked to rate photos of women at different times of the year. The participants were shown snaps every three months over a period of five seasons.

Three kinds of photographs were shown to the subjects -- full body portraits of women in black swimsuits, exposed breasts of different sizes, and faces of young women.

Results revealed that bodies and breasts were rated most attractive in autumn and winter, and least attractive in summer. But there's no seasonal variation in ratings for faces, which the team members believe may be because women's faces are on view all year round.

Supreme Court directives that say that wherever possible the employees should be taken on regular rolls

2008-09-24T21:46:00.000+05:30

A warning for managements: Minister

Special Correspondent

“The incident reflects the simmering discontent among workers”

Oscar Fernandes

NEW DELHI: Describing the killing of L.K. Chaudhury, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of an Italy-based company Graziano Transmissioni in Greater Noida as a fallout of the “simmering discontent among the workers,” the government on Tuesday said, this should serve as a warning for managements.

“It is my appeal to the managements that the workers should be dealt with compassion,” Minister of Labour and Employment (Independent charge) Oscar Fernendes told journalists here.

There are disparities in the wages of permanent employees, contract and temporary workers. The workers should not be pushed so hard that they resort to whatever that had happened in Greater Noida, he said.

Mr. Fernandes, who is likely to visit the site on Wednesday where he will talk to the management and the dismissed workers, said it was a fact that the number of organised workers was decreasing.

“We are going to discuss the matter of hire and fire policy in the next Indian Labour Congress. The practice is being followed in the public sector undertakings (PSUs) also. First we deal with the PSU and later with the private sector,” he said.

According to the Minister, there are several Supreme Court directives that say that wherever possible the employees should be taken on regular rolls instead of contract or temporary basis. But the managements have been ignoring it and anyone demanding this, is relieved within 30 days.

The Minister explained that the workforce was unable to express its simmering discontent over the management policies for the fear of losing jobs, leading to strained ties between them and the management.

The company had dismissed a large number of workers two months ago. The CEO was reportedly beaten to death by a group of dismissed employees inside the premises after a compromise meeting called failed.

Industry criticism

PTI reports:

The Minister’s comments came under sharp attack from the industry. FICCI president Rajeev Chandrasekhar said the Minister’s comments were shocking while Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani said whatever be the circumstances, murder could not be condoned.

New airport screening 'could read minds'

2008-09-24T21:42:00.000+05:30

New airport screening 'could read minds'

London, September 24: Technology that aims to detect devices like guns or explosives at airports could soon be a passe, for scientists are to unveil a new type of screening gadgetry that can read minds.

A team is testing a type of body scanner that uses a technology capable of detecting ‘hostile intent’ -- in fact, it can seek out invisible clues that one might be harbouring criminal intent, such as raised body temperature, pulse and even breathing rate.

According to the scientists, the system 'MALINTENT' uses a raft of ‘non-invasive’ sensors and imagers to detect and evaluate a person's facial expression to gauge whether he could be planning to commit an attack or crime.

And, if the sensors pick up anything considered alarming, analysts can decide whether to subject a person to questioning.

The technology, developed by the Human Factors Division of US Homeland Security's Directorate for Science and Technology, would be used at border checkpoints, airports and special events that require security screening, The Daily Telegraph reported.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, the technology, dubbed Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST, deploys a range of ‘innovative physiological and behavioural technologies’ to pick up ‘indications of malintent or the intent or desire to cause harm’.

But, Spokesman John Verrico said: "We're still very early on in this research, but it is looking very promising. We are running at about 78 per cent accuracy on malintent detection and 80 per cent on deception."

Day after staff kill CEO, Labour Minister tells India Inc: You have been warned

2008-09-24T21:41:00.001+05:30

Day after staff kill CEO, Labour Minister tells India Inc: You have been warned

Manoj C G & Alka Pande

New Delhi | Lucknow, September 23The day the family cremated Lalit Kumar Choudhary, the CEO of the Greater Noida-based firm who was lynched by workers yesterday, while industry groups reacted with a chorus of outrage, Union Labour Minister Oscar Fernandes said his murder should serve as a “warning” to corporates.

Blaming what he called hire-and-fire policies of companies for “simmering discontent” among workers, Fernandes asked “managements to deal with them with compassion”.

“People are employed on contract basis. There is disparity in wages of permanent workers and contract workers. There is simmering discontent among workers and they should not be driven to such an extent as happened in Greater Noida...Managements have to see this as a warning and they should also respond adequately,” Fernandes said.

He said that companies tend to hire people on contracts even when they are in a position to make permanent appointments, leading to fewer jobs in the organised sector. “Workers react violently when they lose their jobs,” the Minister said, adding, “At the same time, managements have their problems also. But what I am saying is that the whole issue should be viewed with compassion. I appeal to companies to treat workers’ problems with compassion.”

Fernandes has called for a review of the industrial disputes resolution system, so that emphasis is put on bipartite consultations, building of trust through information sharing, and the promotion of voluntary arbitration over adjudication.

Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority (GNIDA) CEO Pankaj Agarwal said the death of Graziano Transmissioni CEO Choudhary was “not merely a law and order problem”. And that the incident “is concerned with the whole industrial environment of the state. We are seriously looking into why this kind of situation cropped up, besides reviewing policies to ensure that such incidents are not repeated.” He added that it was “unfortunate that an international company CEO had to sacrifice his life to awaken the Government to introspect (on) the industrial situation”.

The web site of the GNIDA says there is “round-the-clock patrolling by mobile police vans for law and order maintenance” in Greater Noida. Yet, Graziano has said police took hours to arrive on the scene, and Choudhary might have been saved if only they had reached sooner.

While the company spokesperson said that in January, the workers had registered with AITUC, the CPI’s trade union wing, general secretary CPI’s Gurudas Dasgupta told The Indian Express that there was no such affiliation.

Outraged industry organizations said the lynching damages India’s image among global investors. “It is definitely a deterrent to industrial growth. The atmosphere should be safe and sound for industry,” Amitabh Nangia, Chairman, CII Western U P zonal council, said. Diljeet Titus, chairman of the Northern region committee of the Indo-Italian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said, “Labour unrest takes place everywhere but it is unfortunate that in this particular incident, things went out of hand.”

The Indo-American Chamber of Commerce said the incident set a bad precedent for Uttar Pradesh, which needs investment and job opportunities. Assocham president Sajjan Jindal said, “The UP administration needs to take stringent action against those who have committed the gruesome act to restore confidence of investors in the state. Late on Tuesday evening, Chief Minister Mayawati announced an inquiry into the incident by the DIG, Meerut range. She said the incident was “unfortunate”, and her government was committed to the security of industry and entrepreneurs.

The Italian embassy expressed concern and hoped that the judicial system would prosecute the perpetrators. “The situation had been repeatedly brought to the attention of the competent Indian authorities both at Central and local level,” the Italian Embassy said in a statement today. “The incident is all the more worrying as Graziano Transmissioni, after many successful years, had been facing several months of violent forms of protests by self-proclaimed workers representatives”, it said.

Italy warned, no one heard

The Italian ambassador wrote to the UP government two months ago, seeking enhanced security at the factory until the labour dispute had been resolved. If the agitators harmed company staff, Italy might pull out all investment from U P, he warned. “The matter was discussed even by the U P Chief Secretary,” L K Gupta, spokesperson for the company, said. SP (Rural) Babu Ram confirmed the local police had received communication of the envoy’s concerns. “We sent a report on the law and order situation to Lucknow,” he said.

Day after CEO's death, company is firm: it's 'partial lockout'

2008-09-24T21:36:00.001+05:30

Day after CEO’s death, company is firm: it’s ‘partial lockout’

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Pragya KaushikaPosted: Sep 24, 2008 at 0009 hrs IST

Greater Noida, September 23 The dispute between the management and labourers, which left Graziano Transmissioni (India) CEO L K Choudhury dead on Monday, began in the last week of November 2007, company officials said.

A company statement issued today stated that it was enforcing a partial lockout against the striking workers.

The police claimed a “small dispute” between the management and one of the employee representatives snowballed into a major crisis as workers thought the employee was being attacked.

Company officials said that some 350 disgruntled employees staged the first sit-in strike last November. They were protesting dismissal of some fellow labourers.

That was the first time the factory in Greater Noida was locked out, “partially, for a few days,” Graziano India’s personnel manager L K Gupta said. “But we struck a settlement with them (labourers) within three days.”

This January, Gupta said, the workers joined All India Trade Union Congress(AITUC) and sent a list of demands, Gupta said: “The union demanded a salary hike of Rs 7,000 per month. This meant a huge financial burden on the company.”

Gupta said the management and the workers finally settled on a monthly hike of Rs 3,000 on a three-year contract, “with conditions attached.” He said, “We asked them that they would not create any nuisance and would abide by the company’s law and decision.” But the union, Gupta said, later refused to abide by the agreement.

Meanwhile, the labourers disputed company officials’ claim that Monday’s attack was a planned one. “No one (in the management, or among officials) was ready to hear our case, not even the Labour Commission,” Rajendra Singh, one of the labourers who were injured in yesterday’s clash, said.

According to Singh, yesterday (September 22) was the last day of submitting the request letter to reinstate dismissed workers. “We went inside but the security guards misbehaved with us,” he said.

This acted as the trigger, police officials said, for other workers to barge in.

Deputy Labour Commissioner B K Singh said the company recruited around 400 contract employees in January, and the workers soon started demanding permanent status. “In a meeting on September 16 the management agreed to reinstate all dismissed employees, barring 15 who were terminated for grave indiscipline and misconduct,” he said.

But the employees, B K Singh said, kept up their demand: reinstatement of all employees. At this point the company increased salary by Rs 2,000, with incentive of another Rs 1,000 per month, Singh said.

137 workers held for company CEO’s death

A Noida court today sent 63 employees to Dasna Jail on charges of murdering L K Choudhary. Another 74 have been sent to prison on charges of rioting, assault and unlawful assembly. “Initially we filed FIR against 19 workers and have sent 137 dismissed employees to the court. They have been sent to Dasna Jail on 14 days of judicial remand,” SP (Rural) Babu Ram, transferred later in the day, said.

SP (Rural) moved out

A day after the fatal fracas at Graziano Transmissioni, SP (Rural) Babu Ram was today transferred to Bulandshehr. SSP R K Chaturvedi said Monday’s incident was one of the reasons that led to the transfer. Bulandshehr’s Superintendent of Police Surendra Verma would take over from Ram, it was announced.

A day after, Oscar 'sorry' for Noida CEO death remarks

2008-09-24T21:29:00.001+05:30

A day after, Oscar ‘sorry’ for Noida CEO death remarks

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AgenciesPosted: Sep 24, 2008 at 1439 hrs IST

Oscar Fernandes said sorry for his controversial comments in the wake of killing of a CEO in Noida.

New Delhi, September 24: Under attack from the India Inc for his controversial comments in the wake of the killing of a CEO in Noida, Labour Minister Oscar Fernandes on Wednesday expressed his apologies.

"My profound apologies to everybody who feels hurt," he said when asked by reporters to comment on the criticism by the industry for terming the incident as a ‘warning’ to managements not to ‘push’ the employees ‘so hard’.

His remarks evoked sharp reaction from captains of industry with FICCI president Rajeev Chandrasekhar describing them as shocking and Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani saying whatever the circumstances murder cannot be condoned.

Seeking to end the controversy, Fernandes said he was sorry for his remarks.

"I would like to put an end to this chapter by saying I am sorry," he said.

Fernandes said Class Four employees were appointed on contract basis and many a times the contractors did not pay even minimum wages.

Claiming that his remarks were ‘misunderstood’, the Labour Minister said he was for the poor sections of the people and was raising their voice. "If I have no right to speak, I will never speak," he said.

Fernandes had said ‘simmering discontent’ among workers might be the reason behind the killing of Graziano CEO L K Chaudhury at his Greater Noida office.

He had also said there were disparities in the wages of permanent employees and contract workers and felt that workers should not be pushed so hard that they resort to whatever has happened in Noida.