Events And Issues

New Delhi, 2 April 2007

Eleventh Plan 2007-12

APPROACH PAPER MARKS A MILESTONE

By T.D. Jagadesan

India’s Eleventh Five-Year Plan (2007-12) marks a milestone in the country’s planning history. While highlighting the Plan approach Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told the National Development Council (NDC) last month: “There are major constraints we have to confront, many of which require difficult policy changes by the Centre and the State Governments.”

The Prime Minister has lauded the performance of the economy during the just-concluded Tenth Plan, when the growth during the last four years is about eight per cent. This has taken India firmly among front rank of fast growing developing countries. The PM asserted: “The world has a very favourable assessment of our prospects and this is reflected in the fact that the FDI flows are buoyant.”  

Initially after the Planning Commission was set up in 1950, years and plans flew past without a serious pursuit of the national health policy, while the health status of the masses of the people languished. Then came a new initiative.  The Indian Councils of Social Sciences and Medical Research jointly provided a holistic concept of health as well as medical services. Their report: Health for All, an Alternative Strategy, 1981, defined health as a component of overall socio-economic development. The report was widely hailed. But it too soon went off the official screen.

However, it remained a serious challenge for the non-official agencies, especially the Foundation for Research in Community Health (FRCH), which set about testing the core of the above approach; the village community could take care of 70 per cent of its health needs with training of some local women (dais).

Why then do the agonizing disparities persist in health status? The Mid-Term Appraisal (MTA) 2005 had pointed out that corrective steps were not being enforced. The Tenth Plan had envisaged reorganizing and restructuring public health care systems at all levels, developing responsibilities and funds to Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs). “However, the devolution of responsibilities and funds to the PRIs has not happened”, the Tenth Plan targets and goals relating to infant, under-five, and maternal mortality are likely to be missed, and the proportion of chronically under-nourished children in India remains high.

Concludes the MTA: With some exceptions, the vast infrastructure for health care meant to provide preventive health cover to poor households is either dysfunctional or inaccessible to many.  There is a view that the failure of the Government’s PHC health programmes for rural areas is due in large measures to the reluctance of doctors and nurses trained in urban colleges to live in and serve rural communities. The challenge ahead is to reach health to all, in the shortest possible time.

Backward areas are not dead. The people there are living and eking a livelihood, though at subsistence levels, due to constraints beyond their resources though they are highly resourceful as evidenced by their survival against odds. And herein lies the clue for the administrators of this national programme.  Through rapid surveys and studies to capture what the people are doing, what constraints they face and what are their ideas on how they can go forward and all this exercise should be done through the Gram Sabhas.

This exercise should actively involve all available institutional resources in the given areas---be it educational, economic or social and cultural, and list well-regarded community leaders who have contributed to the well-being of the people in the area. This would help in identifying the strengths and constraints, as also available institutional resources and eschew the New Delhi prescribed agenda of building “infrastructure”.

Starting in 2006-07, a Backward Regions Grant fund of Rs.5,000 crore has been entrusted to the Union Ministry of Panchayati Raj for removal of regional disparities and inequalities in 250 backward districts. The key word is “catalyzing” development in these areas. It has two options: “one, to do more of the same as has been done in the past with similar programmes, i.e. conceived and executed by the administration and produce 50 crore worth of benefits from Rs.5,000 crore or to deploy an imaginative approach and put every rupee to do a duty worth three rupees thus raise the productive value of the sum in hand to Rs.15,000 crore.

Take children first. More than half of our children of the tender age of 1.5 years are malnourished. The cruelty is that we do have the foodgrains, but they are stocked not in the stomachs of our infants but in official godowns. If that be so, and it is so; what then is development all about?

Has the gravity of this situation been fully grasped? A year ago the Finance Minister told Parliament that 47 per cent of our children in the age group of 0-3 are underfed while according to the Planning Commission the corresponding figure is 50 per cent of the rural children in the age group 0-5 years and he raised the budgetary allocation for the integrated child development ser ices programmes which feeds such infants, to Rs.3,000 crore in 2005-06, and in the budget 2006-07 raised it further to Rs.4,000 crore.

Under the state aegis, planning is done in the sectoral mode. The format of plan documents, the demand for plan funds, their allocation and distribution, all follow a sectoral approach. The implementing structures such as departments, technical bodies, field cadres, monitoring systems, are also designed along sectoral divisions.

Planning for women, on the other hand, needs “integrative strategies”.  This has been a never-ending search within the state systems, one that has yielded little good result. “Nodal agencies” or “national machinery” have been designed or set up to give chase to this ideal, why they have faced difficulties, which are of the nature of organizational barriers. In other words, the milieu of planning is not women-friendly.

Both the secondary data and information obtained by field investigations are not sufficiently extensive or accurate to establish casual links or the precise measures of change over time in the condition of women in Karnataka. However, they indicate certain organizational or attitudinal elements which merit attention if the benefits of plan schemes are to reach women in under-privileged sections if plan schemes are to reach women in under-privileged sections of the community more effectively.

The Government machinery has proliferated and spread out to villages in many forms, but this has not been reflected in any corresponding increase in its reach of the poor, more especially of poor women.

As in the Indian Constitution, it is necessary to recognize explicitly that women, equally with men, have a right to be recognized as individual participants in economic or social activities, and not just as anonymous members of a household.  This will impel change in a whole lot of attitudes and ideas, from fact gathering to policy formulation. ---INFA

 (Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

Events And Issues

New Delhi, 19 March 2007

Demand For Naval Version

EXPORT EDGE TO BRAHMOS MISSILE

By Radhakrishna Rao

Brahmos Aerospace is vigorously working towards promoting the sale of the joint Indo-Russian supersonic cruise missile to “friendly countries”. In fact, Dr. A. Sivathanu Pillai, Chief Executive Officer of the Brahmos Aerospace, is quite optimistic about this lethal missile doing well in the global market. He said that the missile would be potential after both India and Russia decide the issue at the Government level.

But, as pointed out by Pillai, the decision on the selling of this missile would be taken only after carefully weighing the security concerns and strategic interests of the country. Pillai also said that both India and Russia have jointly identified certain countries where the capacity of the missile would be demonstrated. To begin with, it is planned to market only the original sea launched version of the Brahmos.

Interestingly, Defence Minister A.K. Antony has stated that Brahmos is very much in the export market.  Malaysia is said to be one of the countries to which the missile could be exported.  Reports appearing in the Russian media early this year had suggested that Russian defence companies had expressed their concern that the Brahmos marketing campaign would eventually edge them out of the global market. For Russian anti-ship missiles are in use in the naval forces of a number of countries.

However, following the decision India and Russia took at the Government level early this year, it was decided to give a thrust to the marketing of Brahmos. Against this backdrop, the production rate of Brahmos would be increased to nearly one hundred a year. Many Indian private sector industrial units make substantial contribution to the production of Brahmos through the supply of specific components and hardware.

Dr. G. Lenov Alexander, First Deputy Director General of NPO Mashinostroyenia of Russia which in association with India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) developed Brahmos says: “We expect a bigger market than we analysed initially. We will export in the near future to a few friendly countries.  We expect a total of 1,000 missiles to meet the demand of India, Russia and friendly countries in the foreseeable future. Demand for anti-ship missile is high”.

The development of Brahmos was taken by India’s DRDO in association with NPO Mashinostroyenia because the highly ambitious Integrated Guided Missile Development Progarmme (IGMDP) initiated in 1983 did not include on its agenda an anti-ship missile since the technology for such a missile was complex and difficult to master.

Indian defence experts have described Brahmos as a veritable “Brahmastra”.  Till now, the Indian Navy has been dependent on P-15 and P-20 anti-ship missiles whose decade- old technology leaves much to be desired.  India already has a very large inventory of cruise missiles of varying description serving a number of naval ships.

Strategic analysts hold the view that long firing range of Brahmos provides high combat effectiveness in a naval warfare and the enemy ships could be destroyed even before they approach the distance which allows them use of arms. A few Brahmos have already been inducted into the Indian naval vessels. Similarly, induction process of the land launched version of Brahmos is proceeding apace.

Being versatile, Brahmos can be launched from a variety of platforms including fixed and mobile platforms on land, surface ships, submarines and aircraft. Further, it could be aimed at multiple targets and can be launched vertical or in inclined positions. Brahmos with a range of 290 km has a maximum velocity of 2.8 Mach and can carry conventional warhead weighing upto 300 kg. Significantly, a salvo of nine miles can penetrate and destroy enemy ships, consisting of three frigates with modern anti-missile defence system.

Brahmos is claimed to be three times faster and smarter than the French “Exocet” missile. It is also claimed to be three times faster than Tomahawk and has more than double its range. In terms of technological superiority, it is said to be way ahead of the Harpoon anti-ship missile in service with the Chinese Navy. Ideally suited for anti-ship operations, the Brahmos could help the Indian Navy in a big way in coping with the mounting maritime security threats.

The anti-ship version of the Brahmos is required to hit a moving target and as such needs to carry out mid-course corrections to ensure accuracy.  The two stage solid fuel-driven Brahmos equipped with liquid fuel stuffed ramjet makes for a very low radar signature, thus making the task of enemies to initiate counter measures a tough and challenging preposition.

Brahmos has been tested for severe climatic conditions such as extreme hot desert conditions and stormy monsoon conditions confirming its all weather capability. Meanwhile, the Brahmos Aerospace has taken up a project to develop a variant of Brahmos with a capability to be launched on submarines. In this context, Brahmos Aerospace has asked the Indian Navy to spare one of its Russian made Kiloclass submarines as a test platform for the new missile.

This missile is concurrently being configured for Russia’s Amur class submarines. Identical to the original ship launched version of the missile, the submarine launched Brahmos will be equipped with a 7.65 metre thick cylindrical module to the submarine structure to house the missile and fire control system.

Also under development is an air-launched version of Brahmos weighing 2.5 tonnes as against the 3-tonne sea-launched and land-launched versions. Dr. Pillai said that decks have been cleared for equipping SU-30 MKI combat aircraft with this deadly missile.

Interestingly, after a detailed study, it has been decided to equip SU-30 MKI with Brahmos without bringing about any modifications in the structure of the aircraft.  Dr. Pillai drove home the point that after evaluating various aspects of the aircraft, it was decided to integrate two Brahmos missile into the underbelly of current year. As it is, the air launched version of Brahmos has shorter boosters, stabilized finds and new nose caps.

Dr. Pillai has also revealed that it is planned to design and develop hypersonic missile capable of moving at a speed of 5-7 Mach as against 2.8 Mach of the Brahmos missile. However, the hypersonic missile project is still in a very conceptual stage and definition studies are yet to be completed. It will feature a new engine and totally distinct propulsion system. The Brahmos Aerospace has already set up a team to study the parameters of a parallel programme to create novel technologies, over and above the missile’s current potentials.---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

Events And Issues

New Delhi, 5 March 2007

India Moves Towards Progress

 FARM, INFRASTRUCTURE SECTORS WEAK

By Dr. P.K. Vasudeva

Despite bottlenecks in infrastructure and governance, the Indian economy has developed resilience. It is moving forward on a calibrated growth agenda, step by step, milestone by milestone, Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said recently. There is nothing new. There is everything better, he said at the recent India Economic Summit, jointly organized by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in New Delhi. The competitiveness amongst the Indian States attracting investment, the slow but sure change in attitude in the polity, in bureaucracy and Government, are positive indices, he said.

On the WTO impasse, Nath declared that the world of tomorrow would not be a world of tariffs but a world of rules. “We are willing to negotiate commerce but not subsistence,” he said categorically, referring to India’s stand on agriculture-related issues. “Structural flaws cannot be perpetuated,” Nath said. He felt that the basket of protectionism was, in fact, heavier on the western side vis a vis India’s stand. A 35 per cent increase in imports every year cannot be termed as protectionism, he felt.

Expressing amazement at India’s achievements in recent years, Hoang Trung Hai, Minister of Industry of Vietnam observed that India’s success had risen from the talent of her people.  Though Vietnam too has logged 7.5 per cent growth and moved from an agriculture-based to an industry based economy, the high-tech sector there is not as developed as that in India, he said. He felt that India needs to mobilize its agriculture sector to create more wealth for rural people.

The Indian culture thrives on transcending hurdles, stated Peter Bakker, Chief Executive Officer, TNT, Netherlands. He felt that major hurdles to India’s growth lay in the lack of infrastructure and the barriers between states, impacting both logistics and cost. “There is progress but a lot more needs to be done,” he said.

“The direction is right, the question is the speed,” said Hans-Joachim Korber, Chairman and CEO of Metro AG, Germany, calling for opening up of the food sector, both basic agriculture as well as processed foods. Describing India as one of the most important food factories of the world, he spoke about his company’s investment in educating farmers to ensure quality on its shelves. “The Indain economy is driven by domestic demand, the services sector and hi-tech products… India has to work towards raising the standard of living of its middle class,” he said.

“Non-tariff barriers were serious hurdles in India’s growth path,” according to B. Ramalinga Raju, Founder and Chairman, Satyam Computer Services, who felt not granting of visas and immigration issues were akin to not letting ships dock in ports.  At home, while India has, and would continue to have, sufficient human resources per se, the challenge is to make the three million graduates / engineers created every year more employable in the global space, he said.  This presents a great opportunity for private industry, while the Government needs to put an enabling framework in place, Raju said.

Kevan V. Watts, Chairman, Merril Lynch International, the UK, described the Indian financial and capital markets as well as developed, but cautioned that financial services and software alone cannot carry the entire burden of growth. “India needs better integration with the global economy across all sectors,” Watts said. On FDI, he felt that merely eliminating caps without changing attitudes would not help much,” he added.

“Capacity building is critical to ensuring that significant numbers of people are equipped to participated in the market economy,” said R. Seshasayee, Managing Director, Ashok Leyland, and President of the CII. He noted that growth had ensued “whenever we have pushed an activity towards the market economy.  Hurdles have to be made into opportunities…. But, the process has to be necessarily slow to engage more people with the system…. We need to pursue the agenda of globalization with very specific solutions for each sector.”

All the speakers including Kamal Nath have expressed at the World Economic Forum that India can be a global economic power if it improves its infrastructure, encourages FDI, raises standards of living of the rural India and educate farmers on better output of foodgrains by diversification of crops. It also needs to remove trade barriers between the States, improve power and water shortage and continue fighting for the reduction of trade distorting agriculture subsidies existing in the developed countries even after the World Trade Organisation (WTO) implementation since 1995 at various WTO forums.

India cannot afford to neglect its 67 million farmers, especially when the growth of agriculture has now come down to 2.7 per cent and when the import of agriculture products will be imperative for the country. It is a matter of grave concern that India has not been able to take of its food security and rural population in the right earnest. ---INFA

 (Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

Events And Issues

New Delhi, 19 February 2007

World Social Forum

GLOBAL SPIRIT OF CHALLENGE MANIFEST IN NAIROBI

By Dhurjati Mukherjee

Though a ritual now, this year’s seventh World Social Forum, which was held from January 20 to 25 last at Nairobi evoked immense interest and enthusiasm, especially among the African nations. Social movements in all 53 countries of Africa jointly organized this year’s conference. Around 46,000 participants registered and there were others who participated in the numerous workshops. Significantly the African countries did not participate in the numbers in Porto Alegre or Mumbai, they did in Nairobi obviously because of financial constraints which was also the same reason for the rather reduced presence from Latin American and Asian countries.

There were hundreds of workshops and seminars on various issues affecting the Third World countries. At one such meeting about threats from a proposed green revolution --- a technology-led attempt to increase agricultural output – Indian activist, Dr. Vandana Shiva described how chemical-dependent and costly monocultures of so-called improved varieties of crops had left farmers in India dispossessed and in debt, causing frequent suicides.

The Rockefeller Foundation and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently announced a $ 150 million joint project for a green revolution in Africa. But Shiva pointed out Africa’s risks repeating the Indian scenario and promoting genetically modified organisms or GMO seeds. She described the project as “strategies of dispossessing Africa of food sovereignty and biodiversity”.

The campaigners from the Global Campaign Against Poverty (GCAP) told the WSF that civil society pressure would have to increase if the millennium development goals (MDGs) had any chance of being met. They accused the Western governments of being short on substance and announced a series of action, culminating on the UN Day for the Eradication of Poverty on October 17 this year. Hellen Tombo, a Kenyan youth movement leader and the African representative on GCAP, said promises have been broken. “Our leaders have not been accountable, our leaders have not been transparent”. However, Sunil Shetty, Director of the UN’s Millennium Campaign said that the MDGs were still achievable if activists could persuade governments to stand up to their responsibilities.       

The presence of a large number of trade unions at Nairobi pointed to a possible warming of relations between the unions and NGOs. According to Claire Courteille, a senior policy advisor of the world’s most powerful organization, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) “workers’ rights are a global problem but it manifests itself in different ways. In Africa, the lack of formal work is the real problem while in Asia it is more about what kind of conditions you are working in. In Europe, workers’ rights need to be protected as companies seek to find the cheapest sources of labour”.

Among the other issues that were debated were housing rights, international apartheid, debt-free world, labour, women, just trade etc. Eminent people not just from Africa but also from other countries of the Third World participated in the deliberations.

The Tax Justice Network, an international NGO, is voicing the loot of Africa’s resources as part of its development campaign. Speaking at the WSF, Kenyan coordinator, Alvin Mosioma, pointed out Africa resources were currently being siphoned off into tax havens and wealthy northern jurisdictions with the collusion of some of the world’s most powerful corporations and wealthy banks. He said research has shown that the continent was a net creditor to the rest of the world with about 30 per cent of Sub-Saharan Africa being moved offshore. 

According to Tax Justice Network, about 25 billion pounds flowed into Africa in aid and loans in the last decade while an estimated 200 billion pounds flowed in the opposite direction – to British and Northern banks through corruption, money laundering and other criminal means. London banks were said to hold $ 6 billion from Kenya and Nigeria alone.   

Vitus Azeem from the Network in Ghana observed that the Third World governments were often pressured by the international financial institutions to cut corporate tax for multinationals. He cited the case of Zambia, which had signed away mining rights for a paltry 0.06 per cent in royalties (the world average is 3 per cent), no social obligations and tax-free concessions.

It is significant to mention here that there were sessions that called for fundamental reform of international institutions in favour of “democratic governance of globalization” and “the promotion of more equitable development and respect for cultural, natural and gender diversity”. The call was made in the Manifesto of the World Campaign for in-depth Reform of the System of International Institutions. This has been supported by a group that included Danielle Mitterrand, a social activist and wife of the late French President, Federico Mayor, former UNESCO head, Samir Amin of the Forum du Tiers Monde, Kumi Naidoo, Secretary General of Civicus, Sara Longwe of the African Women’s Development and Communication Network and Hassen Lorgat of a South African NGO coalition. The campaign to reform international institutions, which began in 2006 and is to run till 2009 has the support of eminent intellectuals and academicians the world over, including Noam Chomsky and Boutros Boutros Ghali.    

The Nairobi WSF has projected the severe inequality existing in the world today, specially in Africa, in the process of globalization and the logic of terror and war that feeds it. Given that Africa has been neglected by the world economic system and the reigning powers, the Nairobi meet brought together social activists from all over the continent. The voices of activists venting grievances against the imperialist West gave one the feeling that an alternative strategy for development can definitely be formulated.

How soon the WSF would emerge as a strong instrument to formulate proposals for effective action, foreseen in the Porto Alegre Charter of 2000, remains to be seen. But the fact remains that the WSF was no doubt successful in renewing the dialogue among progressive social movements and intellectuals, formulating proposals for new strategies for revolutionary engagement with neo-liberal globalization, sharing experiences and evolving action plans aimed at crafting alternatives for social transformation. ---INFA

 (Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)