Posts tagged ‘India’

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12/05/2015

Indian rail projects outweigh rivalry before Modi visit to China | Reuters

Beijing has been pushing India to accelerate work on a multi-billion dollar rail link from New Delhi to Chennai ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi‘s visit to China this week, as the Asian giants put economic ties before regional rivalries.

China, which is conducting a feasibility study into a $36 billion bullet train project from the capital in the north to Chennai in the south, has asked for work to begin on a pilot project covering part of the route, officials said.

The two sides have also agreed to speed up implementation of a shorter high-speed rail corridor from Chennai to Bengaluru, as China seeks to cash in on Modi’s vision of modernizing a creaking train system that 25 million people use daily.

Indian Railways Logo

Indian Railways Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Such cooperation could help ease tensions between the neighbors caused by a Himalayan border dispute and Chinese naval forays into the Indian Ocean as well as India’s strategic tie-ups with Japan and the United States.

Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to address the border issue, a major irritant that overshadowed Xi’s visit to New Delhi last year and has proved impossible to resolve despite 13 years of negotiations.

But progress on the economic front is more likely, officials said, as China eyes a greater share of India’s $2 trillion economy. Thanks in part to a statistical revision, India is now the world’s fastest growing major economy, outstripping China.

Modi, who arrives in China on Thursday, appears happy to encourage such investment, despite reservations among India’s powerful security community which has not forgotten a brief border war the countries fought in 1962.

“Modi is abandoning the old approach to China,” said C. Raja Mohan, an influential Indian foreign policy analyst.

“He has recognized that India can’t construct a serious business relationship with China, the world’s second largest economy and a major exporter of capital, by giving the security establishment a veto over economic policy,” he added.

$10 BILLION IN DEALS

China’s ambassador to India, Le Yucheng, told CNN-IBN television that deals worth $10 billion were expected to be signed during Modi’s three-day visit.

He urged the Indian government to focus on cutting red tape to ease investment flows, the channel said in a press release.

During Xi’s visit to India last year, China announced $20 billion in investments over five years, including setting up two industrial parks.

Since then progress has been slow, in part because of the difficulties Modi has had in getting political approval for easier land acquisition laws.

Only a fifth of the necessary land has been acquired for a $5 billion industrial park in the western city of Pune that the two sides announced last year, said a Chinese official.

In Modi’s home state of Gujarat, only 28 percent of the land has been purchased for a proposed $1.8 billion Chinese-built industrial park in Vadodara.

That is not likely to blunt China’s appetite for investments in India, according to experts.

“China’s attitude toward this investment is extremely positive,” said Ma Jiali, executive deputy director of the China Reform Forum’s Centre for Strategic Studies and an India expert.

via Indian rail projects outweigh rivalry before Modi visit to China | Reuters.

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12/05/2015

Optics as well as substance important as India’s Modi visits China | Reuters

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives in the ancient city of Xian on Thursday at the start of a visit to China, he will be met by Chinese President Xi Jinping, in an unusual departure from normal protocol.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi (R) and China's President Xi Jinping shake hands during a photo opportunity ahead of their meeting at Hyderabad House in New Delhi September 18, 2014. REUTERS/Ahmad Masood

Top Chinese leaders almost never travel outside Beijing to meet senior foreign guests on bilateral visits, and Xi’s appearance in Xian, located in Xi’s home province of Shaanxi, underscores China’s determination to set aside past rancor between the world’s two most populous nations, experts said.

“It definitely indicates the significance our president puts on Mr. Modi’s visit,” said Li Li, an India expert at the government-backed China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

“From the Chinese side, we were very impressed by the hospitality extended by Mr. Modi during Xi Jinping’s visit to India,” he added, referring to Modi greeting Xi in his home state of Gujarat when Xi visited India last year.

Modi will visit a Xian pagoda connected to Xuanzang, also known as Tripitaka, the monk who bought the Buddhist sutras to China from India thousands of years ago, according to people briefed on the trip.

“It is sending a very important message,” Li said of Xi’s going to Xian to greet Modi, a place closely connected to the deep historical links between China and India.

Still, the list of problems both countries face are considerable, ranging from a festering border dispute to China’s support for India’s arch-rival Pakistan.

Mistrust runs deep, something Xi will be keenly aware of despite the bonhomie and billions of dollars in deals likely to be signed.

Modi’s new account on Chinese social media site Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, was filled with messages soon after launching this month asking him to return what China calls South Tibet, otherwise known as the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.

“This is the great, great pressure the Chinese government is facing,” said Mao Siwei, a former senior Chinese diplomat who was based in India and Pakistan, talking about the need to manage Chinese public concern about the disputed area.

China claims more than 90,000 sq km (35,000 sq miles) disputed by New Delhi in the eastern sector of the Himalayas.

India says China occupies 38,000 square km (14,600 sq miles) of its territory on the Aksai Chin plateau in the west.

In September, the two armies faced off in the Ladakh sector in the western Himalayas just as Xi was visiting India for the first summit talks with Modi. This time, the border has been quiet ahead of Modi’s arrival.

While chances of a breakthrough on the border look distant, the exchange of visits by Modi and Xi so soon after both took office is a positive sign, said Ram Madhav, a senior leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a hardline Hindu nationalist organization that has close ties to Modi’s BJP.

“There is an earnest eagerness to connect with the Indian leadership,” Madhav told a forum in Beijing.

“Prime Minister Modi has chosen to come in his first year (of office) to China. It shows that the leaders on both sides are seriously attempting to … bridge the most important challenge between the two countries – the trust deficit.”

via Optics as well as substance important as India’s Modi visits China | Reuters.

Posted in China alert, Chindia Alert, Economics, Foreign invasion, GeoPolitics, India alert, Neighbour conflict, Politics, Territorial dispute | Leave a Comment »

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11/05/2015

Private banker KV Kamath named first BRICS bank head | Reuters

Indian private banker K.V. Kamath has been named as the first head of a new development bank being set up by the BRICS group of emerging market economies, Finance Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi told reporters on Monday.

K.V.Kamath gestures during the Reuters India Summit at his office in Mumbai in this November 25, 2008 file photo. REUTERS/Stringer/Files

The BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – agreed to set up the $100 billion development bank last July, in a step toward reshaping the Western-dominated international financial system.

“Kamath has been appointed as the head of the BRICS bank, the appointment will become effective when he becomes free from his current assignments,” Mehrishi told reporters in New Delhi.

It was agreed then that the New Development Bank, which will fund infrastructure projects in developing nations, would be based in Shanghai. It would be headed by an Indian for a first five-year term, followed by a Brazilian and then a Russian.

via Private banker KV Kamath named first BRICS bank head | Reuters.

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07/05/2015

Primary care centres key to reforming healthcare in India: health economist Kenneth Thorpe

Over 60 percent of deaths in India are due to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases and cardiovascular disease, which are also responsible for about 70 percent of spending on healthcare. They also affect the economic health of the country, with NCDs and mental illness expected to cost India $4.58 trillion between 2012 and 2030.

Health economist Dr. Kenneth E. Thorpe, chairman of Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease, an international NGO, is advising the government of India on developing a policy to deal with the country’s rising chronic disease problem.

In an interview with India Insight, Thorpe shared his thoughts on how India can reform its healthcare delivery system, the need to replicate successful models of primary health centres to cover the entire country, and why payments for health services need to be changed from out-of-pocket expenses to a subscription-based system and through insurance.

Q: Why should India focus on non-communicable diseases (NCDs)?

A: NCDs account for over 60 percent of deaths in India. It’s also a major driver of health spending – 60 to 70 percent of what India spends on healthcare is linked to NCDs. It’s a major problem not just in terms of healthcare but also in terms of productivity.

Q. Which sector is more crucial to improving healthcare delivery in India – government or private?

A: Both. It’s got to be a public-private partnership. So today, India spends about 4 percent of its GDP on healthcare. About one-and-a-half percent of that is the government and the rest is private. So we just need to scale that up – probably proportionally to something like 5 or 6 percent of GDP.

Q: In what way are you working with the Indian government?

A: We’re working on developing a policymaking framework for healthcare reform solution for India.

Q. Has there been any progress?

A: With the Modi government coming in, there was a renewed interest in developing something as a health policy solution for India. They seem very receptive to some of the things that we’re talking about in terms of preventing chronic disease and treating patients that have chronic disease.

Q: What have you been able to achieve?

A: We were here in December and the ministers asked us to put together a blueprint of what would a healthcare reform look like. And so we put together some thoughts that they basically incorporated into their blueprint (National Health Policy) in February. That’s like an outline, so the next point is saying: “How do we operationalise this outline?”

Q: What have you proposed in your blueprint?

A: One is that we really need to build up the primary care infrastructure. We need more manpower, more hospital beds, but we really need capacity – building up primary care clinics, primary care models that really deal with identifying chronic disease, preventing it and managing it. And there are some good models that we’ve identified throughout the country that we think we can scale them and replicate them throughout India.

Q: Are you saying that the main focus should be on primary healthcare centres?

A: That’s the biggest challenge. That’s the starting place. We need to build from the ground up.

Q: And majority of scaling up will have to come from the private sector?

A: I think one of our messages is that the government can’t do this alone. It just doesn’t have the resources to really build the system and build the infrastructure. It’s going to need private sector investment as well. So we’re trying to figure out how we can harness some of the private sector money and help build a healthcare delivery system and potentially a bigger healthcare insurance system.

Q: Where does the government come in?

A: The government has to play a role in funding, particularly low-income populations – the poor that live in rural areas, urban poor.

Q: What else?

A: Manpower training, more doctors and nurses …

Q: Can the government help in nudging private players to increase their participation, especially in rural areas?

A: The government’s got to play a leadership role and say: “Here’s where we are going, here’s the plan, here’s the framework, the blueprint. We’ll work with the states in order to implement this.”

But we need to sort of change the way that healthcare services are paid for. So today in India, 60 percent of spending is out of pocket. So we need to change that from out-of-pocket buying to something like a primary care package (subscription) or an insurance product.

Q:  Very few people in India have health insurance, and health policies have a very limited coverage.

A: I think the insurance model needs to be completely changed. Private insurance covers just 2 percent of the population and it covers only in-patient hospital care. And the problem is that most of these chronic diseases need primary care, medications, home community-based services – things that are not covered in current insurance policies.

Q: Where does India stand on the problem of NCDs as compared to other developing countries?

A: The challenge India faces is its ability to manage and deal with it is way below the average because the capacity is not there, the infrastructure is not there, the manpower is not there, the investment is really not there.

via Primary care centres key to reforming healthcare in India: health economist Kenneth Thorpe.

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29/04/2015

Where’s the Cheapest Place to Buy…? Probably India – India Real Time – WSJ

If cities were stores, to find the best deal you’d be advised to shop in Mumbai for Levis and Coca Cola KO -0.15%, go to Rio for a pack of Marlboro cigarettes and stop off in San Francisco to buy an iPhone 6.

5.21
1.89
Mumbai
1.89
New Delhi
2.22
Johannesburg
2.43
Hong Kong
2.77
Beijing
3.14
Tokyo
3.53
Singapore
4.25
Berlin
4.79
San Francisco
4.79
New York
5.21
Rio

Deutsche Bank research published last week compares prices for everyday items in cities around the world. Overall, across a range of products, India is “the cheapest major economy.”

Looking for a cheap date? A Big Mac, movie, cab, soft drink and couple of beers costs $24.70 in Mumbai – making India’s financial capital the least-expensive place in the world to show someone a good time.

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Try to do the same in San Francisco or Tokyo and you won’t get change from $100 – in fact, you’ll need to scrape a few more dollars together to cover the bill.

Need a man’s haircut? A short-back-and-sides in New Delhi on average goes for $2.40, a snip of the price elsewhere in the world. A trim in Tokyo costs 15 times more.

The study compiles prices posted on the Internet and from secondary sources, though it doesn’t say what they are.

“We have tried our best to use goods and services that are standard across countries or are close substitutes,” the authors of “The Random Walk Mapping the World’s Prices 2015,” wrote.

Such studies, including this one, do not reflect the true cost of living though because they ignore housing rents – often a person’s biggest monthly outlay.

Add on the price of accommodation in Mumbai, which can have rents as high as those charged in New York, and the city would suddenly look a lot less easy on the wallet.

*The price in each country.  **A Big Mac, movie, cab, soft drink and couple of beers. ***Two nights in a standard 5 star hotel room, four meals, two snacks, car rentals for two days, two pints of beer, four liters of soft drinks/water, and a bit of shopping (a pair of jeans and sports shoes.)

via Where’s the Cheapest Place to Buy…? Probably India – India Real Time – WSJ.

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21/04/2015

Rahul Gandhi’s Speech: The Indian Media’s Surprise Verdict – India Real Time – WSJ

India’s punditocracy in recent weeks has loved to hate Rahul Gandhi.

Mr. Gandhi, the vice president of India’s opposition Congress party, was derided by some opinion-makers for taking a break from frontline politics in mid-February–and not returning until mid-April. But on Monday, in a speech before Parliament, Mr. Gandhi surprised many pundits.

Not by what he said — he attacked, as expected, the government’s proposed changes to India’s laws on purchasing land — but by the fact that he spoke at all.

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Mr. Gandhi, who is a member of Parliament, rarely speaks in India’s lower chamber, the Lok Sabha. In fact, this was only his first address since Congress lost badly in national elections almost a year ago.

Congress’s loss provoked deep soul-searching within the party about its future. Mr. Gandhi was Congress’s prime ministerial hopeful in that drubbing.

On Monday, Mr. Gandhi blasted India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, and his Bharatiya Janata Party, for proposed changes to the Land Acquisition Act that, among other things would make it easier for businesses and the government to buy land for defense, industrial corridors, affordable housing and infrastructure projects by removing a requirement to obtain the consent of more than two-thirds of landowners.

Mr. Gandhi’s Congress party argues these changes are bad for India’s huge population of farmers, who he described in Parliament as the country’s backbone. “Everything has been built on a foundation that has been provided to us by the farmer,” Mr. Gandhi told lawmakers.

Pictures of Mr. Gandhi, dressed in a close-fitting white kurta and flanked by some of the party’s youngest members of Parliament, filled television screens and set his name trending on Twitter on Monday evening.

It also put the ruling BJP on the defensive after months of relatively limited challenges from the Congress party.  A piece in the Indian Express newspaper said the government was pushed into “damage control after Rahul Gandhi’s attack over the agrarian situation.”

Sanjay Singh, who writes about politics for Firstpost, wrote that Mr. Gandhi’s “rather aggressive pitching in Parliament has surely charged up Congress’ ranks.”

Another piece, posted on the IBNLive website of the Indian news channel CNN-IBN, said Mr. Gandhi had shown “he is back and he means business.”

“Maybe it is the low expectations,” the IBNLive piece said, “but Rahul Gandhi was definitely on fire.” The article was published with no byline.

via Rahul Gandhi’s Speech: The Indian Media’s Surprise Verdict – India Real Time – WSJ.

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20/04/2015

Xiaomi to Unveil its Newest Phone in India First – India Real Time – WSJ

Cheap smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp. is set to unveil its latest phone on Thursday in Delhi – the first time it has held a global launch in India – and in typical fashion is drumming up interest by turning the event into a velvet-rope affair.

Xiaomi has released no details about the new phone or any of its features, but that didn’t stop over 6,000 people from applying for a limited number of tickets to attend the “global premiere” on the company’s Facebook page.

The Chinese firm hasn’t said how many public tickets are on offer, but a post by the company on Facebook said that “seats are very limited.” Siri Fort, where the event will be held, has four auditoriums and the largest can seat 1,865 people.

via Xiaomi to Unveil its Newest Phone in India First – India Real Time – WSJ.

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19/04/2015

Govt may offer visa-on-arrival facility to Chinese tourists – The Hindu

An intelligence agency expressed reservations and suggested a cautious approach before taking a final decision.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh with Mahesh Sharma, MoS, Tourism at the launch of the tourist e-visa facility in New Delhi. File photo

Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s proposed visit to China, India may extend the e-tourist visa facility to citizens of that country, despite strong opposition from an intelligence agency.

The matter was discussed threadbare at a recent high-level meeting, chaired by Union Home Secretary L.C. Goyal, during which the intelligence agency expressed reservations and suggested a cautious approach before taking a final decision.

The Tourism Ministry has been strongly advocating extending the e-tourist visa facility to five more countries, including China. The other four countries are the U.K., France, Italy and Spain.

Home Ministry officials said the intelligence agency has red-flagged granting of the e-tourist visa facility to Chinese nationals due to various reasons.

Frequent issuance of stapled visa by China to people from Arunachal Pradesh was one of the key reasons for the objection, an official said.

There is a possibility of announcement of visa-on-arrival facility to Chinese nationals before Mr. Modi’s proposed visit to China in May.

via Govt may offer visa-on-arrival facility to Chinese tourists – The Hindu.

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19/04/2015

The marriage squeeze in India and China: Bare branches, redundant males | The Economist

KHAPs are informal local councils in north-western India. They meet to lay down the law on questions of marriage and caste, and are among India’s most unflinchingly conservative institutions. They have banned marriage between people of different castes, restricted it between people from the same village and stand accused of ordering honour killings to enforce their rulings, which have no legal force. India’s Supreme Court once called for khaps to be “ruthlessly stamped out”. In April 2014, however, the Satrol khap, the largest in Haryana, one of India’s richest states, relaxed its ban on inter-caste marriage and made it easier for villagers to marry among their neighbours. “This will bring revolutionary change to Haryana,” said Inder Singh, president of the khap.

The cause of the decision, he admitted, was “the declining male-female sex ratio in the state”. After years of sex-selective abortions in favour of boys, Haryana has India’s most distorted sex ratio: 114 males of all ages for every 100 females. In their search for brides, young men are increasingly looking out of caste, out of district and out of state. “This is the only way out to keep our old traditions alive,” said Mr Singh. “Instead of getting a bride from outside the state who takes time to adjust, we preferred to prune the jurisdiction of prohibited areas.”

The revision of 500 years of custom by its conservative guardians symbolises a profound change not just in India. Usually dubbed the “marriage squeeze”, the change refers both to the fact of having too many men chasing too few brides and the consequence of it in countries where marriage has always been nearly universal. Sex selection at birth is common in China and India. The flight from marriage—with women marrying later, or not at all—is long established in Japan and South Korea. But until recently, Asia’s twin giants have not felt the effects of sexual imbalance in marriage. Now they are.

The marriage squeeze is likely to last for decades, getting worse before it gets better. It will take the two countries with their combined population of 2.6 billion—a third of humanity—into uncharted territory. Marriage has always been a necessary part of belonging to society in India and China. No one really knows how these countries will react if marriage is no longer universal. But there may be damaging consequences. In every society, large numbers of young men, unmarried and away from their families, are associated with abnormal levels of crime and violence.

via The marriage squeeze in India and China: Bare branches, redundant males | The Economist.

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19/04/2015

Entrepreneurship in India: Ready, steady, go | The Economist

IN 2013, when foreign capital suddenly rushed out of emerging markets, India was one of the worst-affected countries. There were plenty of reasons for investors to panic. GDP growth had slumped. The public finances were a mess. And inflation was hovering around 10%. A year earlier a power cut had plunged hundreds of millions of Indians into darkness.

It is a testament to the country’s enduring promise that within a year investors were once again scrambling for a stake in its future—this time tempted by the pro-growth promises of Narendra Modi, who won a resounding victory in elections last May. India’s population rivals China’s in size, but has a far younger complexion. That India is so much poorer in most other regards seems only to add to its allure. Those who missed out on China’s boom might still catch the wave in India.

“Restart” by Mihir Sharma, a columnist for the Delhi-based Business Standard, is a reliable and readable guide to India’s stop-start economy. It is admirably clear on what has to change if India is to taste the high living standards enjoyed in other parts of Asia. Each year 13m Indians join the workforce. Jobs must be found for them. But the giant factories that hummed with baby-boomers in other places are scarce in India, because it is so difficult to do business there.

Mr Sharma applies regular doses of rueful humour as he explains why some of the toughest job-protection laws in the world have ensured that there are few decent jobs in India. The jokes are a necessary feature in a book that contains as many unpalatable truths as this one. They are also a mask for the author’s anger at India’s poverty, at the nation’s failure to match the development of its Asian neighbours and at the self-delusion of its policymakers. “It’s almost as if we genuinely believe all the lies about ourselves we tell foreign investors,” he writes.

Mr Sharma is at his funniest (or angriest) when listing the ludicrous regulations that business must adhere to. Complying with them all is impossible, so officials routinely extort bribes for breaches. Businesses are required, among many other things, to keep an abstract of the 1948 Factories Act to hand. Pass it to a visiting labour inspector, allow him a moment to reflect and “he will find a violation”, notes Mr Sharma. The wisecrack has a painful sting. To avoid a shakedown, businesses stay tiny and inefficient. And India remains poor and woefully short of decent jobs.

Where did India go wrong? Mr Sharma picks the leftward lurch in 1969—when Indira Gandhi nationalised banks to outflank opponents in her own party—as a moment when things shifted. Manmohan Singh’s famed budget of July 1991 was badly flawed because the reforms it contained were incomplete. Mr Singh opened up goods markets to competition but did nothing to free markets for land, labour and capital. A ban on selling farmland to industry remains; labour inspectors can still prey on factory owners; and without a bankruptcy law, capital stays trapped in dying firms. New factories could not readily spring up to compete with imports, and manufacturing has been in relative decline since the mid-1990s.

Mr Sharma thinks factories can still be India’s salvation. But manufacturing-led growth has become harder to pull off. Modern factories use more machinery and less labour than in the past. While India was making half-hearted reforms, China was securing its position in global supply chains. It is now tougher for aspiring nations such as India to break in. It is perhaps for this reason that others look for hope in India’s vibrant services sector. Hindol Sengupta is one such author. His “Recasting India” is a paean to the commercial flair of millions of hawkers and small shopkeepers plying for trade in India. Yet the small-scale service enterprises celebrated by Mr Sengupta are a developmental dead end. They are a sign of economic weakness and not vitality, as Mr Sharma rightly argues. Small traders seem less impressive in other countries only because the best entrepreneurs have been able to grow bigger.

via Entrepreneurship in India: Ready, steady, go | The Economist.

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