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11/04/2014

India’s election: Seasons of abundance | The Economist

LICK your lips: mangoes are coming into season in Andhra Pradesh, piled up on roadside fruit stalls. Hyderabadis claim theirs are the country’s sweetest. So too are the bribes paid by the state’s politicians to get people to vote. Since early March state police have seized more money from politicians aiming to buy votes—590m rupees ($10m)—than the rest of India combined. An excited local paper talks of “rampant cash movement”, reporting that police do not know where to store the bundles of notes, bags of gold and silver, cricket kits, saris and lorry-loads of booze.

Andhra Pradesh, India’s fifth most populous state, is due to hold an impressive series of polls in the next few weeks—municipal elections and then both state-assembly and national ones. Many politicians keep up old habits by paying voters, especially rural ones, to turn out. A villager can stand to pocket a handy 3,000 rupees per vote. Economists predict a mini-boom in consumer goods.

If this is the lamentable face of Indian politicking, the hopeful side is that, increasingly, skulduggery is being pursued. A worker with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Hyderabad says police looking for illicit cash stopped and searched her car five times in a single drive one day last week.

This may be because in Andhra Pradesh, unusually, politicians are not currently running the show. The state is under “president’s rule”, with bureaucrats in charge, ahead of its breaking into two on June 2nd. Then, a new state, Telangana, will emerge to become India’s 29th, covering much of the territory once ruled by the Nizams of Hyderabad, the fabulously wealthy Muslim dynasty whose reign India’s army ended in 1948. A rump coastal state gets to keep the name Andhra Pradesh. For a decade Hyderabad will serve as joint capital.

The split will have a bearing on the national election. In 2009 the ruling coalition, the United Progressive Alliance, led by Congress, returned to national office on the back of two whopping southern victories. Congress scooped 33 seats in Andhra Pradesh, more than in any other state. Its ally next door in Tamil Nadu, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), got 18 seats. Both now face heavy defeats. “The south’s biggest impact nationally will be negative, in not voting for Congress”, says K.C. Suri of Hyderabad University.

via India’s election: Seasons of abundance | The Economist.

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11/04/2014

India Under Narendra Modi Could Be Japan’s Best Friend – Businessweek

The results of national elections in India, expected to be announced on May 12, could mean good news for Japan and not such good news for China. Narendra Modi, the leader of the Hindu nationalist opposition party, has long been a favorite of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who would like to foster military and economic ties with India. Modi, the front-runner in the contest to be India’s prime minister, and Abe also share an antagonism for China. Modi has criticized the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for being too accommodating toward China and has pledged to take a tougher line on issues such as the border dispute between the two countries that has festered for decades.

A supporter of Narendra Modi dons a mask of the Hindu nationalist candidate

Abe has clashed with China in a dispute over the ownership of several islands in the East China Sea. When it comes to the Chinese, “the Japanese are extremely apprehensive,” says P.K. Ghosh, senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think tank. “It doesn’t take a genius to say India can be the largest friend of the Japanese.”

Abe has long treated Modi as a kindred spirit. Even after the George W. Bush administration put Modi on a travel blacklist for his alleged role in the 2002 riots that killed about 1,100 people, mostly Muslims, in Gujarat state, Abe welcomed Modi to Japan. The Indian politician, who was exonerated by the Indian courts, visited in 2007 during Abe’s first term as prime minister and then again when Abe was opposition leader in 2012. “Japan has worked very hard to improve relations with India,” says retired Indian General Vinod Saighal, author of Revitalising Indian Democracy. With a Modi victory, he says, relations “will get a boost, certainly.”

via India Under Narendra Modi Could Be Japan’s Best Friend – Businessweek.

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11/04/2014

Young professionals in Bangalore favour Modi’s promise, shrug off riots | India Insight

As far as Vinod Hegde is concerned, Indian prime minister candidate Narendra Modi bears no responsibility for the 2002 Gujarat riots. More to the point, Hegde doesn’t care.

Hegde, a 26-year-old stockbroker in Bangalore, said that for people like him, the Gujarat chief minister is the only choice to lead India after countrywide parliamentary elections that began this week.

Allegations that Modi failed to stop or even allowed deadly riots in 2002 don’t sway his vote, Hegde said. And if the ruling Congress party’s candidate is Rahul Gandhi, the choice becomes even clearer.

“Even assuming Modi has been responsible for XYZ, we don’t see an alternative,” Hegde said. Referencing a Twitter post by music director Vishal Dadlani, he said, “If I had to choose between a moron and a murderer, I’d probably choose the murderer.”

Not everyone states their case for supporting Modi in such blunt terms, but interviews with young professionals in Bangalore, the information technology hub known as India’s Silicon Valley reveals a calculation in favour of Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that omits the riots from the equation.

For many people in Bangalore’s highly educated workforce, Modi is a welcome alternative to what is seen as an ineffective and corruption-tainted Congress party. They are part of what some media organizations have called a “Modi wave” that opinion polls, however unreliable, say could bring the BJP to power and push out the Gandhi-Nehru family’s Congress party.

Many BJP supporters see Rahul Gandhi, the party’s leader and the Gandhi family’s heir apparent, as ill suited for the job of running a country that is trying to revive its slowing economic growth and to provide opportunities for prosperity to its burgeoning middle class. (A note for people unfamiliar with this round of Lok Sabha elections: Indians will vote for members of Parliament in their local constituencies, and the winning party’s leadership names its ministers when it forms a new government.)

via Young professionals in Bangalore favour Modi’s promise, shrug off riots | India Insight.

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09/04/2014

India’s Election Choice: Growth Economy or Welfare State – Businessweek

Indian elections aren’t known for their clarity. Messy, cacophonous affairs, they stretch across months and almost invariably result in fragmented verdicts. Political groupings are opportunistic, driven by personality rather than issues; competing party platforms are often indistinguishable.

A shopkeeper displays water sprinklers with portraits of Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi in Chennai, India<br />

This year’s parliamentary elections—the nation’s 16th since independence, running from April 7 to May 12—are proving an exception. The distinctions between India’s leading parties are unusually sharp; the race is shaping up as a genuine battle of ideas, a real debate over the direction of the nation.

India’s two main parties are led by men who in many ways couldn’t be more different. Rahul Gandhi, the standard-bearer for the ruling Indian National Congress party, is the scion of a distinguished family that includes three former prime ministers. At 43, he’s also the candidate of youth. Narendra Modi, the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is ahead in most polls, is 63, a self-made man, and an experienced administrator who has served for more than 12 years as the chief minister of the state of Gujarat. Gandhi espouses a brand of secular, inclusive politics; Modi is viewed with suspicion by many for a series of bloody communal riots that took place under his watch in Gujarat. (The Indian courts exonerated him of personal involvement.)

via India’s Election Choice: Growth Economy or Welfare State – Businessweek.

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07/04/2014

Two Visions for India’s Economy, Sort Of – India Real Time – WSJ

India’s national election, which kicked off Monday, is a contest of old-fashioned socialism versus market liberalism, of handouts to the poor versus pro-growth reforms that will benefit all. Right?

Sort of. At least judging by the two main contenders’ official platforms.

The Bharatiya Janata Party — out of power for a decade — looks set to win big this year, helped by its popular prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, who promises to reboot India’s economy with a combination of smart policy and able administration.

But now that the BJP has at last released its election manifesto after multiple delays, it’s easier to see where exactly its economic policy ideas differ from the incumbent Congress party’s – and, perhaps more interestingly, where they don’t.

Both parties promise to revitalize India’s manufacturing sector, long a laggard amid the country’s economic rise. Both say they will implement a national goods and services tax, known elsewhere as a value-added tax. Both want to create a “single-window system” to expedite land, environmental, power and other approvals for investors. Both back the current system of food subsidies, though the BJP highlights that the program should be efficient and corruption-free.

And both parties want to build high-speed rail, stem inflation, modernize infrastructure, make housing affordable, create jobs, expand cities and make taxation more predictable. (Though the BJP wins style points for referring to retroactive taxes as “tax terrorism.”) The BJP even matches the splashiest item in Congress’s manifesto — a commitment to providing “universal and quality health care for all Indians” — with its own call for universal health care.

All of that said, the manifestos alone do give the BJP an edge in terms of structural reforms that many economists, businesses and investors have long craved from India’s government.

The party’s manifesto speaks of addressing “over-regulation” in business and “bottlenecks” in the delivery of public services. Its section on developing agriculture focuses more on investing in productivity-enhancing technology than on increasing government subsidies, which the Congress manifesto notes as a major achievement of its decade in office.

The BJP says it will “rationalize and simplify the tax regime,” which the party calls “currently repulsive for honest taxpayers.” The Congress manifesto merely reiterates its support for the Direct Tax Code, an earlier legislative effort to eliminate tax distortions and improve compliance that has stalled in Parliament’s lower house.

The BJP also says it will review India’s creaking labor laws, which it decries as “outdated, complicated and even contradictory.” The Congress manifesto, meanwhile, “recognizes the need for creating flexibilities in the labor market” while redoubling its commitment to “protecting the interests of labor through more progressive labor laws.” The World Bank said in a report last year that India’s “cumbersome and complex” labor policies “have unambiguously negative effects on economic efficiency.”

via Two Visions for India’s Economy, Sort Of – India Real Time – WSJ.

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07/04/2014

Facts and figures for India’s 2014 general election | India Insight

Voting in the 2014 election begins on April 7. More than 814 million people — a number larger than the population of Europe — will be eligible to vote in the world’s biggest democratic exercise.

Voting will be held in nine stages, which will be staggered until May 12, and results are due to be announced on May 16. Elections to state assemblies in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Sikkim will be held simultaneously.

Around 930,000 polling stations will be set up for the month-long election using electronic voting machines, first introduced in 2004.

Uttar Pradesh has the most eligible voters (134 million); Sikkim the lowest (about 362,000). Male voters constitute 52.4 percent of the electorate but women voters outnumber men in eight regions — Puducherry, Kerala, Manipur, Mizoram, Daman & Diu, Meghalaya, Goa and Arunachal Pradesh.

About 23 million eligible voters have been enrolled in the 18 to 19 age group, nearly 3 percent of India’s voters.

Of India’s 814.5 million eligible voters, 28,314 identify themselves as transgender and their gender is listed as “other”. There are 11,844 non-resident Indians registered to vote in the election this year.

Since introducing photo voter ID cards and electoral rolls in 2009, 98 percent of India’s eligible voters have the former, 96 percent have the latter.

Electronic voting machine security includes: transported under armed escort and stored in strong rooms, with a double lock system and guarded 24×7 by armed police, and CCTV coverage. Also, parties/candidates allowed to keep a watch on them.

Nearly 10 million officials (including police for security) will be deployed.

Uttar Pradesh has the most Lok Sabha seats (80) while the states of Nagaland, Sikkim, Mizoram and the union territories have one seat each.

A candidate can spend up to 7 million rupees ($116,350) for his election campaign in Delhi and all states except Arunachal Pradesh, Goa and Sikkim. For these states and other union territories, the limit is 5.4 million rupees ($90,000).

A candidate for the Lok Sabha makes a deposit of 25,000 rupees ($415) at the time of filing the nomination. If the candidate fails to get a sixth of the total valid votes polled, this amount is forfeited. Nearly 85 percent of the candidates lost their security deposit in the 2009 election.

In the 15th Lok Sabha, around 78 percent of the members have a graduate, post-graduate degree or a doctorate.

Malkajgiri in Andhra Pradesh is the biggest Indian constituency in terms of voters with around 2.95 million electors; Lakshadweep is the smallest with 47,972 voters. In Lower Dibang Valley district of Arunachal Pradesh, Hukani polling station has 22 registered voters. Officials travel 22 km on foot to get there.

In the 2009 election, 363 political parties took part. The Bahujan Samaj Party contested the maximum number of seats (500 out of 543), followed by the Congress (440) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (433).

The last general election had a voter turnout of over 58 percent. Nagaland (89.99 percent) had the highest turnout while Jammu & Kashmir (39.68 percent) saw the lowest.

Namo Narain of the Congress party beat his BJP rival by 317 votes in Rajasthan’s Tonk Sawai Madhopur constituency — the smallest margin of victory in the 2009 election.

“Basic Minimum Facilities” for polling stations include drinking water, shed, toilet, ramp for disabled voters.

Voters will have a “None of the Above” option on voting machines.

The indelible election ink that is applied while electors cast their votes is manufactured by Mysore Paints & Varnish Limited, a Karnataka government undertaking.

Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party has emerged as the favourite in opinion polls, which reflect waning support for Rahul Gandhi’s Congress party that wrested power from the BJP in 2004.

Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, will also be challenged by a clutch of regional parties that are vying for power as part of a “third front” opposed to both the Congress and the BJP.

Also in the race is Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party, which made a stunning debut in Delhi elections last year and is now eyeing a national presence on the anti-corruption plank.

via Facts and figures for India’s 2014 general election | India Insight.

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31/03/2014

10 Vital Things Politicians Should Talk About – WSJ

From: http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2014/03/31/10-vital-things-politicians-arent-talking-about/?mod=irt&mod=indiablog

Indian politics is disconnected from what India actually wants. A week before the largest democracy on Earth goes to the polls, here are 10 things the electorate is talking about even though most politicians aren’t.

1.     Unfulfilled Aspiration

If there is one thing two decades of liberalization has given us, it was a sense of hope that things can get better, but not at any cost. People want cheaper food, not cheap food. They want cheaper education, not cheap education. When people in villages have a little money, they prefer to send their children to a private school where there children are taught in English over public school where they learn in Hindi, staff are often absent and standards are low. People across India are aspirational.

They will give their vote to whoever taps into a person’s desire for a better future.

2.     Employability

India’s problem is no longer about employment, it is about employability. The trade association, National Association for Software and Services Companies says 75% of technical graduates and 80% of general studies graduates don’t have the skills to get a technical or call center jobs in a country where more than half of the 1.2 billion population is under the age of 25.

Young people want their lives to get better through the jobs they get. But we have to improve their skill sets first. The government has to take a step back and look at the lack of standards and quality that has overtaken our education system. Why are people still flocking to unaccredited colleges and institutes? Because they don’t have a better choice. It is easy to see where their frustrations come from. Unless someone fixes the lack of skills, a demographic nightmare is on its way.

3.     Food wastage and underweight children

Let us connect the dots between India’s inability to build granaries and cold storage centers and the hunger that exists in large parts of the country. India has the largest number of underweight and malnourished children in the world but it also wastes as much wheat each year  as Australia produces – 21 million tonnes.

People want someone to say they will fix this imbalance. Has a single candidate talked about this? You cannot argue that India cannot fix these things in the 21st century.

4.     Drinking Water

In 2012, the Water Resources Ministry essentially told Parliament that in time,groundwater will not be fit for human consumption. The aquifers are drying up and underground water is increasingly polluted or going saline. With India being the world’s largest user of ground water, there is a huge scarcity in the offing.

Add to that, 80% of untreated sewage in India flows straight to into drinking water sources such as rivers and groundwater.  Be it farmers or people living in the cities, access to clean water is by far one of the biggest issues for people across the country. There are ways to address this, such as rain water harvesting, but has a politician promised that on a war footing we can solve it?

5.     Electricity

Three hundred million Indians have never had access to electricity. So when theblackout in 2012 plunged nearly 600 million in darkness – for at least about half of them, it was just another day.

Meanwhile, in a coal abundant nation, all we have heard about energy in the last two years is that the mismanagement of the allocation of coal blocks to private companies resulted in a presumed loss of 1.85 trillion rupees ($31 billion) to the exchequer.

6.     Healthcare

India has barely one hospital bed per 1,000 population compared to the global average of nearly three beds per 1,000. We have one operating theater per 1,000 people. This at a time when the World Health Organization estimates that India is one of the few countries in the world where people have to pay the maximum proportion of their wages for private healthcare – and the Harvard School of Public Health calculates that the country’s economic losses due to non-communicable disease between 2012 and 2030 will be $6.2 trillion. There is an unprecedented crisis of public health and it cannot be resolved in a hurry.

7.     The Disease Burden

Our disease burden is one of the largest in the world. We lost 9.2 million productive years to heart disease in 2000. By 2030, the number is likely to rise to 17.9 million productive years. There are no immediate solutions for India and it spells potentially huge economic losses.

8.     Civilian Safety

Gun violence is one of the biggest killers in India. Nearly 40 million Indians own guns. Barely 15% of these are registered weapons. India has the second largest civilian ownership of guns, second only to the United States. Around 80% of all murders in India are carried out using these illegal guns. This is one of the biggest security challenges of India – but it is hardly addressed because many of those guns are connected to politics and politicians.

9.     Outdated Justice System

There are 30 million court cases pending in courts across India and a backlog of 66,000 cases in the Supreme Court. The system is sluggish. People don’t feel there is a justice system that can back them up or give them any sense of closure. India needs at least 75,000 new judges in the next 35 years and Indians want a government that can create more courts and hire more judges.

  1.  Inefficient bureaucracy

Communicating with an Indian bureaucrat is a terrible experience. They are unapproachable. You have to argue for your rights. Citizens want a voice and any way for them to be heard now is entirely absent.

Other than the elections, there is no other way for the electorate to show their frustration towards a system that is willfully unresponsive; that does not care about accountability. There is incredible frustration here – people, and businesses, are not willing to put up with such inefficiency much longer.

Hindol Sengupta is a senior editor at Fortune India magazine and author of “100 Things To Know And Debate Before You Vote” (Harper Collins). Follow India Real Time on Twitter @WSJIndia

 

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26/03/2014

Congress Bets on Welfare Programs – India Real Time – WSJ

India’s Congress party is doubling down on welfare.

Facing what is shaping up to be a steep uphill battle to win a third term in office, Congress on Wednesday outlined a policy agenda that would expand healthcare, housing and other benefits for the poor and disadvantaged.

Rahul Gandhi, who is leading Congress’s campaign in the voting that begins in April, also said a new Congress government would invest $1 trillion in infrastructure projects and remove hurdles to business.

For India’s poor to thrive, he said, “we need to unleash business.”

Still, Congress’s tone is sharply different than the one adopted by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and its standard bearer, Narendra Modi, who emphasizes pro-business policies and infrastructure building – while saying government also needs to help the poor.

During the Congress-led government’s most recent decade in office, subsidy spending has soared, from 459 billion rupees in the year ended March 31, 2005, to an estimated 2.55 trillion in the 12 months ending March 31 of this year.

By sticking with and expanding such programs, Congress is hoping it will appeal to its base in India’s impoverished countryside.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi said if re-elected, Indians would get improved healthcare, an expansion of housing benefits for the landless and a boost in social security hand-outs for the elderly and disabled people.

These promises echo themes that have run through the party’s history and have dominated the political careers of Mrs. Gandhi and her son, Rahul, who is leading Congress’s election campaign.

The central Congress belief: A government must engineer economic equality and inclusive growth, even as it celebrates free markets.

“The future of India is the poor people of India, those are the people the Congress party works for,” Mr. Gandhi said. “The biggest problem I have with the BJP is that the India of the BJP’s dreams is an India where a few people run this country.”

Mr. Gandhi, the party’s vice president who took charge this year, has tried to frame the electoral campaign as a choice between these two approaches.

He has gone after the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi for what he calls an exclusive focus on building roads and airports without addressing the question of who gets access to them.

Mr. Modi’s message, however, is striking a chord with many Indians, who are fed up with government inefficiency, corruption allegations and a slowing economy. Many young voters – even those in rural India who through technology and migration are influenced by urban sentiment – are frustrated with a lack of jobs and strong leadership and are drawn to the BJP’s promise of development.

Opinion polls show widespread dissatisfaction with the current situation in India and Mr. Modi is widely considered the frontrunner for the premiership.

via Congress Bets on Welfare Programs – India Real Time – WSJ.

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25/03/2014

CPM draws Nazi parallel, calls Gujarat model ‘big lie’ – The Times of India

CPM on Monday alleged that the so-called Gujarat model of development and the claim of being riot-fee were based on the “big lies” mantra of Nazi propaganda.

Releasing two booklets – ‘Defeat BJP, Defend Secularism’ and ‘No To The Gujarat Model’ – based on NSSO data and census records, politburo member Brinda Karat and CPM’s Gujarat secretary Arun Mehta said the Gujarat model was based on exploitation. “The so-called Gujarat model is based on cheap labour and its exploitation, very low expenditure on consumption, very high malnutrition, very high school dropout rates and very low expenditure on education and healthcare,” Karat said. She added there was no Modi wave in the country and the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate was just getting desperate.

“Their desperation shows in their actions. They are not only annoying and disappointing their own senior leaders but also giving tickets to those who have been charge-sheeted in the Muzaffarnagar riots cases and attracting people like Amit Shah, who is accused in an encounter killing case, and the likes of Pramod Muthalik (whose outfit was accused of molesting women in Mangalore),” she said.

On development, Karat said that according to NSSO records, 90% of people in rural areas of Gujarat spent only Rs 75 per day on food and essentials. She said the dropout rate was as high as 58% while employment rate grew at 0.4%, much less than the national average. “Narendra Modi and P Chidambaram are equal in terms of jobless growth. The so-called Gujarat model is only for the corporates and not the people,” she said.

Mehta said a myth was being spread that there was 24-hour power supply in Gujarat. “In rural Gujarat, power supply is not for more than six hours. Also, 1.21 lakh applications for power connection are pending for five years,” he said.

via CPM draws Nazi parallel, calls Gujarat model ‘big lie’ – The Times of India.

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12/03/2014

Police: Rebels kill 18 soldiers in central India – Businessweek

Police say Maoist rebels have killed 18 paramilitary soldiers in an ambush in central India.

Mukesh Gupta said rebels ambushed a paramilitary camp on Tuesday in a remote and dense forest in Chattisgarh state.

The police said the rebels surrounded the camp and opened fire, killing 18 instantly. Several others were injured in the attack in the Jiram Ghati area in southern Chattisgarh.

The rebels, who say they are inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, have been fighting for more than three decades in several Indian states, demanding land and jobs for agricultural laborers and the poor.

via Police: Rebels kill 18 soldiers in central India – Businessweek.

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