Archive for ‘Inequalities’

« Older Entries  |   Newer Entries »
04/11/2013

In China’s Xinjiang, poverty, exclusion are greater threat than Islam | Reuters

If the analysis in this report is correct, then it is good news for China and Xinjiang. Alleviating poverty is difficult, but far easier than eliminating religious extremism.

“In the dirty backstreets of the Uighur old quarter of Xinjiang\’s capital Urumqi in China\’s far west, Abuduwahapu frowns when asked what he thinks is the root cause of the region\’s festering problem with violence and unrest.

A police officer stops a car to check for identifications at a checkpoint near Lukqun town, in Xinjiang province in this October 30, 2013 file photo. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Files

\”The Han Chinese don\’t have faith, and the Uighurs do. So they don\’t really understand each other,\” he said, referring to the Muslim religion the Turkic-speaking Uighur people follow, in contrast to the official atheism of the ruling Communist Party.

But for the teenage bread delivery boy, it\’s not Islam that\’s driving people to commit acts of violence, such as last week\’s deadly car crash in Beijing\’s Tiananmen Square – blamed by the government on Uighur Islamist extremists who want independence.

\”Some people there support independence and some do not. Mostly, those who support it are unsatisfied because they are poor,\” said Abuduwahapu, who came to Urumqi two years ago from the heavily Uighur old Silk Road city of Kashgar in Xinjiang\’s southwest, near the Pakistani and Afghan border.

\”The Han are afraid of Uighers. They are afraid if we had guns, we would kill them,\” he said, standing next to piles of smoldering garbage on plots of land where buildings have been demolished.

China\’s claims that it is fighting an Islamist insurgency in energy-rich Xinjiang – a vast area of deserts, mountains and forests geographically located in central Asia – are not new.”

via In China’s Xinjiang, poverty, exclusion are greater threat than Islam | Reuters.

Related articles

Posted in China alert, Dissident, Economics, Ethnic clash, Freedom, Human rights, immigration, income-wealth gap, Inequalities, Instability, Insurgency, Internal politics, Politics, self determination, separatism | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , ,
04/11/2013

Seven killed in rebel attack in India’s Assam state – BBC News

At least seven people have been killed in an attack by suspected militants in India\’s north-eastern state of Assam, police said.

map

Rebels belonging to the Garo National Liberation Army opened fire on migrant workers who were playing cards late on Sunday in Goalpara district.

Nine workers were also injured in the attack, police said.

Assam has been plagued by ethnic clashes and separatist violence in recent years.

Goalpara has witnessed violence between the Rabha and Garo tribes.

Reports say that Sunday night\’s violence happened after Garo militants from neighbouring Meghalaya state fired at a group of Hindi-speaking migrant workers who were playing cards and gambling to celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights.

\”These militants in army dress came and fired indiscriminately… after the attack, they retreated to Meghalaya,\” AP Raut, a senior Assam police official, told the NDTV news channel.

Correspondents say many tribespeople resent the presence of outsiders, who they believe are taking their jobs and marrying local women.

via BBC News – Seven killed in rebel attack in India’s Assam state.

Posted in Dissident, Economics, Ethnic clash, India alert, Inequalities, Instability, Insurgency, Internal politics, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , ,
08/09/2013

Jairam blames ‘forcible acquisition’ for Naxal problem

The Hindu: “Coming down heavily on PSUs for displacing tribals, Union Minister Jairam Ramesh on Sunday blamed their actions for growth of Naxalism in many areas and cautioned that the era of “forcible acquisition” was now over.

The Union Rural Development Minister said if the new Land Acquisition Act is implemented properly, it will put an end to “inhumane” displacement of tribals from forests and check Maoist menace. File photo

The Union Rural Development Minister said if the new Land Acquisition Act is implemented properly, it will put an end to “inhumane” displacement of tribals from forests and check Maoist menace.

“The record of public sector (PSUs) in displacements is worse than the record of the private sector. This is a sad truth… that more displacement has been caused by government and public sector projects than private sector projects…particularly in Naxal areas. And this is why Naxalism has grown in these areas,” the Minister said.

Mr. Ramesh slammed National Thermal Power Corporation for allegedly seeking police help for forcibly acquiring land in Keredari block of Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh district, where a villager agitating against land acquisition was shot dead two months ago.

He was addressing Hindi and regional media two days after Parliament passed the path-breaking ‘Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013’.

Criticising NTPC for the alleged forced acquisition, Ramesh said, “Companies must also learn to be sensitive, changing aspirations.”

“NTPC will face a challenge. If there is firing in an NTPC project and people get killed in that firing, they cannot acquire the land…Indian companies still believe that they can use government to forcibly acquire land. That era is gone. You cannot do forcible acquisition,” the Minister said when asked about the reported criticism by a top NTPC official of the new Land Acquisition legislation.

“If this (new) land acquisition law is properly implemented, it will defeat Naxalism,” he said, referring to incidents of “inhumane” displacement of tribals from forests for various public and private sector projects in mineral-rich states like Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh.

The new law will be notified in three months.

Mr. Ramesh said, “Land Acquisition is the root of the Maoist issue. If you have a humane, sensitive and responsible land acquisition policy, lot of your problems relating to Naxalism would go. Tribals will be with you.

“It is a fact that many of the tribals have been displaced and they have not got proper compensation, they have not got rehabilitation and resettlement…particularly in mining of coal and irrigation projects,” he added.

Mr. Ramesh, the architect of the new Land Acquisition Bill, said the 119-year-old Land Acquisition Act, 1894, had a “very important role” in encouraging Maoist activities in Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, parts of tribal Maharashtra and tribal Andhra Pradesh.

When asked that 13 laws, including the Indian Railways Act, National Highways Act, Land Acquisition Mines Act and Coal Bearing Areas Acquisition and Development Act, under which bulk of the land acquisition takes place, are exempted from the purview of the Bill, the Minister said, “Within one year, all compensation, all rehabilitation and resettlement…all these Acts will come under the newly enacted legislation.””

via Jairam blames ‘forcible acquisition’ for Naxal problem – The Hindu.

See also:

Posted in Economics, Ethnic clash, ethnic minority, India alert, Inequalities, Insurgency, Internal politics, land transfer, Politics, Religious clash, Security, ultra poor | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , ,
03/06/2013

Sonia seeks quick implementation of rural livelihood schemes

The Hindu: “Buoyed by the response to UPA’s rural livelihood scheme, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday sought quick implementation of Aajeevika mission across the nation especially its central and eastern parts.

Congress chief and UPA Chairperson Sonhia Gandhi with womens from various states during the AAJEEVIKA DIWAS 2013 in New Delhi on Monday. Photo: R.V. Moorthy

Ms. Gandhi’s thrust on the scheme comes at a time when Congress is bracing for Lok Sabha elections due next year and assembly elections in five states including BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh this year.

Giving a thrust to poverty alleviation in her address at the second anniversary of the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) here, Ms. Gandhi said that the empowerment of weaker sections and women has been the main pillar of our UPA government.

The Congress president also chose the occasion to announce that a special package is being prepared for North Eastern states and hilly states like Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh to give a fillip to such measures.

She said that in the next ten years, 7 crore BPL families have to be freed from poverty, which is not an easy job.

“But by adopting the Aajeevika Mission, many states have proved that through women SHGs, economical and social changes can be brought in the rural areas.

“Seeing this success, it seems that now the Aajivika Mission will have to be implemented fast across the country especially in central and eastern India,” Ms. Gandhi said.

Aajeevika was launched by Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) in June 2011. It aims at creating efficient and effective institutional platforms of the rural poor enabling them to increase household income through sustainable livelihood enhancements and improved access to financial services.

The NRLM has set out with an agenda to cover 7 Crore BPL households, across 600 districts, 6000 blocks, 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats and 6 lakh villages through self-managed Self Help Groups (SHGs) and support them for livelihood collectives in a period of 8-10 years.

Hailing the NRLM as an important programme of the UPA, Ms. Gandhi claimed that in no other country of the world, such an ambitious and huge scheme for the empowerment of women exists.

“Today everybody has proved that this programme can free women from the curse of poverty. Such an an emancipation is based on stable and self-made employment and not on the mercy and kindness of anybody.

“Our purpose is clear. We have to strengthen the women SHGs and their instruments financially,” she said.”

via Sonia seeks quick implementation of rural livelihood schemes | The Hindu.

Posted in Economics, India alert, Inequalities, Low income, Politics, poverty | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , ,
31/05/2013

Urbanisation: Some are more equal than others

The Economist: “FOR many migrants who do not live in factory dormitories, life in the big city looks like the neighbourhood of Shangsha East Village: a maze of alleys framed by illegally constructed apartment buildings in the boomtown of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong. There are at least 200 buildings, many of them ten storeys tall (see picture). They are separated by only a metre or so, hence the name “handshake buildings”—residents of neighbouring blocks can reach out from their windows and high-five.

The buildings are China’s favelas: built illegally on collectively owned rural land. Rents are cheap. An eight-square-metre (86-square-foot) flat costs less than $100 a month. They symbolise both the success of the government’s urbanisation policy and also its chronic failures. China has managed a more orderly system of urbanisation than many developing nations. But it has done so on the cheap. Hundreds of millions of migrants flock to build China’s cities and manufacture the country’s exports. But the cities have done little to reward or welcome them, investing instead in public services and infrastructure for their native residents only. Rural migrants living in the handshake buildings are still second-class citizens, most of whom have no access to urban health care or to the city’s high schools. Their homes could be demolished at any time.

China’s new leaders now say this must change. But it is unclear whether they have the resolve to force through reforms, most of which are costly or opposed by powerful interests, or both. Li Keqiang, the new prime minister, is to host a national conference this year on urbanisation. The agenda may reveal how reformist he really is.

He will have no shortage of suggestions. An unusually public debate has unfolded in think-tanks, on microblogs and in state media about how China should improve the way it handles urbanisation. Some propose that migrants in cities should, as quickly as possible, be given the same rights to services as urban dwellers. Others insist that would-be migrants should first be given the right to sell their rural plot of land to give them a deposit for their new urban life. Still others say the government must allow more private and foreign competition in state-controlled sectors of the economy such as health care, which would expand urban services for all, including migrants. Most agree the central government must bear much more of the cost of public services and give more power to local governments to levy taxes.

Any combination of these options would be likely to raise the income of migrants, help them to integrate into city life and narrow the gap between the wealthy and the poor, which in China is among the widest in the world. Such reforms would also spur on a slowing economy by boosting domestic consumption.

Officials know, too, that the longer reforms are delayed the greater the chances of social unrest. “It is already a little too late,” Chen Xiwen, a senior rural policy official, said last year of providing urban services to migrants. “If we don’t deal with it now, the conflict will grow so great that we won’t be able to proceed.”

Yet Mr Li, the prime minister, would do well to dampen expectations. The problems of migrants and of income inequality are deeply entrenched in two pillars of discriminatory social policy that have stood since the 1950s and must be dealt with before real change can come: the household registration system, or hukou, and the collective ownership of rural land.”

via Urbanisation: Some are more equal than others | The Economist.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2013/05/14/right-thing-to-do-comes-with-a-price-tag/

Related articles

Posted in China alert, Construction, Economics, Household registration, Human rights, Inequalities, Labour unrest, Low income, Migrant workers, temporary workers | 2 Comments »

Tags: , , , ,
29/05/2013

Settlers in Xinjiang: Circling the wagons

The Economist: “In a region plagued by ethnic strife, the growth of immigrant-dominated settlements is adding to the tension

MANY hours’ drive along what was once the southern Silk Road, through a featureless desert landscape punctuated by swirling dust-devils and occasional gnarled trees, a curious sight eventually confronts the traveller: row upon row of apartment blocks with vivid red roofs, as if a piece of Shanghai suburbia has been planted in the wilderness (see picture). Following the military-style nomenclature of immigrant settlements in China’s far west, it calls itself 38th Regiment. It is home to thousands of people, in a spot where just a few years ago there was nothing but sand.

The town is the latest addition to a vast network of such communities in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China’s biggest province by land area and also its most ethnically troubled. Neighbouring Tibet has long been roiled by ethnic tension, too, but rarely has it witnessed the kind of violence that has troubled Xinjiang: a low-level insurgency involving ethnic Uighurs whose Muslim faith and Central Asian culture and language set them apart from the Han Chinese who dominate places like 38th Regiment. On April 23rd, 21 people were killed near Kashgar during an encounter between police and alleged separatists. An explosion of inter-ethnic violence in 2009 in the regional capital, Urumqi, that left nearly 200 dead, by official reckoning, exacerbated the divide. The expansion of the settlement network is deepening it further.

To use its full name, the 38th Regiment of the 2nd Agricultural Division is part of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. This state-run organisation, usually referred to as the bingtuan (Chinese for a military corps) controls an area twice the size of Taiwan, broken into numerous parts scattered around the province (see map). A few bits are city-sized. Most are more like towns or villages. Of their total population of more than 2.6m people, 86% are ethnically Han Chinese. In Xinjiang as a whole, in contrast, Han officially make up just over 40% of the 22m inhabitants. The rest are Uighurs and a few other ethnic groups.”

via Settlers in Xinjiang: Circling the wagons | The Economist.

Related articles

Posted in China alert, Dissident, Ethnic clash, Inequalities, Instability, Insurgency, Internal politics, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
26/05/2013

* Sonia Gandhi ‘devastated’ by India Chhattisgarh ambush

BBC: “The president of India’s Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi, has said she is “devastated” by Saturday’s attack on party officials in Chhattisgarh state.

Sonia Gandhi (R) and PM Manmohan Singh in a hospital in Raipur (May 26 2013)

At least 24 people were killed, including Chhattisgarh Congress chief Nandkumar Patel, his son, and local leader Mahendra Karma, when suspected Maoist rebels ambushed their convoy.

Mrs Gandhi visited some of the wounded with PM Manmohan Singh on Sunday.

The prime minister said India would “never bow down” before the rebels.

He denounced the “barbaric attack” which he said should be an inspiration in the fight against extremism and violence.

Unconfirmed reports said they were unable to visit the scene of the attack because of security concerns.”

via BBC News – Sonia Gandhi ‘devastated’ by India Chhattisgarh ambush.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/political-factors/indian-tensions/

Posted in Dissident, Human rights, India alert, Inequalities, Instability, Insurgency, Internal politics, Justice, Politics, unrest | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , ,
08/05/2013

* Indian government to deploy 10,000 more personnel in four states to fight Maoists

Times of India: “With the government moving towards a fight to finish war against Maoists in Red Zone, the Union home ministry has decided to deploy additional 10 bBattalions (10,000 personnel) of paramilitary forces in four highly naxal-affected states — Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Bihar.

CRPF, Central Reserve Police Force (www.crpf.n...

CRPF, Central Reserve Police Force (www.crpf.nic.in), Group Centre Pune, at Talegaon, on Old Mumbai Pune Highway (NH4) (Photo credit: Ravi Karandeekar)

Five (5,000 personnel) out of the 10 battalions will be drawn from the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) while the remaining five will be spared by SSB, BSF and ITBP for anti-naxal operations.

Disclosing the decision in response to a Parliament question, the ministry said that the additional 10 battalions had been sanctioned on the basis of requests made by the respective state for stepping up operations against the Red Ultras.

At present, a total number of 532 companies (53,200 personnel) of paramilitary forces have been deployed in the seven Maoist-affected states — Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha.

Officials in the ministry said that Jharkhand — which is currently under the President’s rule — would see the maximum deployment where the security forces had already been engaged in intensive operations against the Red Ultras under the leadership of ex-CRPF chief K Vijay Kumar who is posted there as one of the advisors of the state governor.

“Idea is to continue the intensive operations against Maoists before the onset of Monsoon in these states”, said an official.”

via Government to deploy 10,000 more personnel in four states to fight Maoists – The Times of India.

Related articles

Posted in Dissident, India alert, Inequalities, Instability, Insurgency, Internal politics, Politics, unrest | 1 Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
16/04/2013

* 10 Maoists killed in encounter on Andhra, Chhattigarh border: Police

Times of India: “At least 10 Maoists were killed in a gun battle between security forces and the rebels in Kanchal forests close to the inter-state border of Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in tribal Bastar region on Tuesday morning, police said.

Maoist rebels train with guns in Chhattisgarh

Preliminary reports said a joint team of Greyhounds-the elite commando force of Andhra Pradesh-and Chhattisgarh police had a fierce encounter for three hours between 0400 and 0700 hours under Pamed police station area in Bijapur district. Security forces claimed that they have gunned down 10 rebels during the encounter in which a large number of rebels were injured.

It’s not immediately known whether the bodies of slain rebels were recovered by the forces as the Maoists usually take away the bodies of their demand comrades. However, police said they have recovered arms and ammunitions, including INSAS and .303 rifles, from the encounter spot.”

via 10 Maoists killed in encounter on Andhra, Chhattigarh border: Police – The Times of India.

Related articles

Posted in Dissident, Freedom, Human rights, India alert, Inequalities, Instability, Insurgency, Politics, terrorism, unrest | 1 Comment »

Tags: , , , ,
06/02/2013

* China OKs sweeping tax reforms to tackle inequality

First the talking – now the walking.

Reuters: “China unveiled sweeping tax reforms on Tuesday to make wealthy state-owned firms, property speculators and the rich pay more to narrow a yawning gap between an urban elite and hundreds of millions of rural poor.

A family arrives at Beijing West Railway Station February 5, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Lee

The plans approved by the State Council – China’s cabinet – also included commitments to push forward market-oriented interest rate reforms to give savers a better return and more security.

Chief among the reforms is a requirement to raise the percentage of profits contributed by state-owned firms to the government by about 5 percentage points by 2015.

Together with measures to raise wages and improve households’ return on assets, the reforms signal an attempt to shift economic growth towards increased consumption and away from the current reliance on investment spending.

“The State Council is not just talking about the gap between rich and poor, they’re talking about the whole economy and how income is distributed among various actors – the households, the corporations and the government,” said Andrew Batson, research director of GK Dragonomics, an economic consultancy in Beijing.

“It’s about changing the entire flow of income around the national economy.””

via China OKs sweeping tax reforms to tackle inequality | Reuters.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2012/12/10/china-wealth-gap-continues-to-widen-survey-finds/

Posted in China alert, Consumer, Economics, Good news, income-wealth gap, Inequalities | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , ,
« Older Entries  |   Newer Entries »
CCChang

Law of Unintended Consequences

continuously updated blog about China & India

ChiaHou's Book Reviews

continuously updated blog about China & India

What's wrong with the world; and its economy

continuously updated blog about China & India