politics | CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

13/09/2013

Modi all set to be anointed BJP PM candidate

The Hindu: “BJP was all set on Friday to declare Narendra Modi as the party’s Prime Ministerial candidate after hectic parleys by senior leaders to convince L.K. Advani, Sushma Swaraj and Murli Manohar Joshi to give up their opposition to him.

Gujarat Chief Minister and BJP election campaign committee chief Narendra Modi during his visit to Hyderabad recently. File photo: P.V. Sivakumar

BJP Parliamentary Board will meet at 5:30 p.m. at the party headquarters in New Delhi, it was announced.

While Mr. Joshi is said to have been won over, last minute efforts were on to bring around Mr. Advani and Ms. Swaraj.

The decision to convene the panel meeting came after Mr. Rajnath Singh held a meeting with Mr. Advani.

Earlier, BJP leader Nitin Gadkari met party president Mr. Rajnath Singh to discuss the issue. Later, Mr. Gadkari met Mr. Advani to persuade him on Mr. Modi’s name. Ms. Swaraj and Mr. Ananth Kumar also joined the meeting.

Mr. Advani had conveyed his reservations about announcing Mr. Modi’s name at this juncture. He had suggested that the BJP chief ministers should be consulted on the issue and the party should wait till the forthcoming Assembly elections to Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Delhi are over.

The BJP patriarch is of the view that making Modi the Prime Ministerial candidate will put issues like price rise and corruption — on which the BJP has attacked the Congress — on the backburner and make the controversial leader the issue, party sources said.

The sources indicated that the BJP leaders want a unanimous decision on Mr. Modi at the Parliamentary Board meeting and hence had intensified efforts to win over dissenting voices.

Mr. Joshi was asked to return to the capital by a special flight from Sagar, Madhya Pradesh where he had gone to attend a party programme. Though he is not convinced about Mr. Modi being projected as the Prime Ministerial candidate, he has conveyed to the party that he will abide by the majority view in the Parliamentary Board, the sources said.

Mr. Modi got a shot in the arm on Friday when NDA allies Shiv Sena and Shiromani Akali Dal extended their support to him for the Prime Ministerial candidate post.”

via Modi all set to be anointed BJP PM candidate – The Hindu.

Posted in Democracy, Elections, India alert, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Bharatiya Janata Party, Madhya Pradesh, Narendra Modi, politics

11/09/2013

China ditches pointless awards in latest anti-waste push

More austerity.

Reuters: “China said on Wednesday that it will ditch 76 pointless official – and sometimes obscure – awards as it seeks to rein in waste and extravagance, part of President Xi Jinping‘s crusade against pervasive corruption.

Government departments will, for example, no longer be able to award prizes for “excellent vocational education teaching materials” or “administration in accordance with the law” for tax collectors, according to the new rules.

“In recent years, many government departments … have been obsessed with these kinds of awards and evaluations and formalism has run rampant,” the central government said in a statement on its website (www.gov.cn).

“Not only has this not had the desired effect, it has been a huge waste of personnel and resources and has even caused unhealthy tendencies, causing a strong reaction in society.”

A similar campaign in 2009 had resulted in annual savings of 6.4 billion yuan ($1.05 billion), the government said.

“The cancelling of these 76 awards is just the first step, and the project will continue and deepen,” it added.

Plaques marking the award of such prizes and evaluations can be seen everywhere in China from ministries to parks and subways and generally have little real meaning as they are mostly given for political rather than competitive reasons.

The new rules echo demands made of officials to simplify their lives and get closer to the people by Xi since he took over as Communist Party chief last November.

He has made cutting back on ostentation and waste a key theme of his administration, seeking to assuage anger over corruption and restore faith in the party.”

via China ditches pointless awards in latest anti-waste push | Reuters.

Posted in austerity, China alert, Economics, Internal politics, Politics, Reform | Leave a Comment »

Tags: China, Communist, Communist Party, communist party of china, ostentation, pervasive corruption, politics, Tax collector, Vocational education, Xi JinPing

11/09/2013

Guangzhou to empty labour camps

SCMP: “Guangzhou plans to empty its hard-labour camps by year’s end, state media reported yesterday, the latest locality to phase out the notorious punishment.

Rights advocates have long complained that the “re-education through labour“, or laojiao, system which lets police send suspects to work camps for up to four years without trial, is widely abused to silence dissidents, petitioners and other perceived troublemakers.

In March, newly installed Premier Li Keqiang promised nationwide reforms to the system this year, but concrete steps have yet to be announced. In the meantime, some cities or provinces have been moving away from the punishment.

“All [100 or so] detainees in Guangzhou labour camps will have completed their sentences and be released by the end of the year,” the China Daily reported, citing a senior judge in the city. Guangdong province stopped taking new re-education through labour cases in March, it said.

In February, Yunnan said it would no longer send people to labour camps for three types of political offences.

Four cities designated as testing grounds have replaced the system with an “illegal behaviour rectification through education” programme, domestic media said at the time.

The forced labour system was established under Mao Zedong in the 1950s as a way to contain “class enemies”. A 2009 UN report estimated that 190,000 mainlanders were locked up labour camps.

Calls to scrap the system grew last year after the media exposed the plight of Ren Jianyu , a former official who spent 15 months in a Chongqing labour camp for reposting criticisms of the government on his microblog.”

via Guangzhou to empty labour camps: state media | South China Morning Post.

Posted in China alert, Human rights, Illegal practices, Justice, labour camp, Politics, Reform, Rule of law | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Chongqing, Guangdong, Guangzhou, Labor camp, Li Keqiang, Mao Zedong, politics, Re-education through labor

08/09/2013

A Chinese power struggle: Hunting tigers

The Economist: “A DRIVE against corruption? Or a political purge? Or a bit of both? Outside China, not many people noticed the dismissal of Jiang Jiemin, the minister overseeing China’s powerful state-owned enterprises (SOEs). His charge—“serious violations of discipline”—is party-speak for corruption. Officials at CNPC, a state-run oil giant which Mr Jiang used to run, have also been charged. But in Beijing it fits a pattern. It follows on from the trial of Bo Xilai, the princeling who ran the huge region of Chongqing and was a notable rival of Xi Jinping, China’s president. Mr Xi now seems to be gunning for an even bigger beast: Zhou Yongkang, Mr Jiang’s mentor, an ally of Mr Bo’s, and until last year the head of internal security whom Mr Bo once hoped to replace.

Mr Xi vows to fight corrupt officials large and small—“tigers” and “flies” as he puts it. He has certainly made as much or more noise about graft as his predecessors. If Mr Zhou is pursued for corruption, it will break an unwritten rule that the standing committee should not go after its own members, past or present. And there are good reasons for Mr Xi to stamp out corruption. He knows that ill-gotten wealth is, to many ordinary people, the chief mark against the party. It also undermines the state’s economic power.

But this corruption drive is also open to another interpretation. To begin with, the tigers being rounded up are Mr Xi’s enemies. Mr Bo had hoped to use Chongqing as the springboard to the Politburo’s standing committee. The verdict on Mr Bo, expected any day, is a foregone conclusion. His sentence will be decided at the highest levels of the Communist Party, and it can only be harsh. Party politics, as seen by its players, is an all-or-nothing game, and the stakes are even higher when family prestige and fortunes are at stake.

Mr Xi is also open to the charge of being selective about leaving other tigers untouched. His own family’s fortune, piggy-banking off Mr Xi’s career, runs into hundreds of millions of dollars. Even as Mr Xi rails against corruption, he has overseen a crackdown on reformers calling, among other things, for the assets of senior cadres to be disclosed. And although the party makes much of how Mr Bo’s trial is the rule of law at work, many of the moves against Mr Bo, Mr Jiang and Mr Zhou appear to be taking place in a parallel and obscure system of detention for party members known as shuanggui.

Now set out your stall, Mr Xi

So China is entering a crucial period. The optimistic interpretation of all this is that Mr Xi is not just consolidating his own power but also restoring political unity. This will free him to push ahead with the deep but difficult economic reforms that he has promised and that China so badly needs if growth is not to stumble; it would also allow him to drive harder against corruption. The SOEs are bound to be part of both campaigns.

The test will come at a party plenum in November. There, Mr Xi should make it clear that even his friends are not above the law. A register of official interests would be laudable, and a few trials of people from Mr Xi’s own camp would send a message. He should also tie his campaign against graft to economic liberalisation: break up the various boondoggles and monopolies, and there will be far fewer chances for theft. It is still not clear whether Mr Xi’s “Chinese Dream” is a commitment to reform or maintaining the status quo. For China’s sake, it had better be reform.

via A Chinese power struggle: Hunting tigers | The Economist.

India speaks 780 languages, 220 lost in last 50 years

A few days ago, there was a post about languages in China – https://chindia-alert.org/2013/09/06/beijing-says-400-million-chinese-cannot-speak-mandarin/. This post is about languages in India.

Reuters: “No one has ever doubted that India is home to a huge variety of languages. A new study, the People’s Linguistic Survey of India, says that the official number, 122, is far lower than the 780 that it counted and another 100 that its authors suspect exist.

The survey, which was conducted over the past four years by 3,000 volunteers and staff of the Bhasha Research & Publication Centre (“Bhasha” means “language” in Hindi), also concludes that 220 Indian languages have disappeared in the last 50 years, and that another 150 could vanish in the next half century as speakers die and their children fail to learn their ancestral tongues.

The 35,000-page survey is being released in 50 volumes, the first of which appeared on Sept. 5 to commemorate the 125th birth anniversary of Indian philosopher Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, who was also the country’s second president. The last one is scheduled to come out in December 2014.

Ganesh Devy, who supervised the project, said this is the first comprehensive survey of Indian languages that anyone has conducted since Irish linguistic scholar George Grierson noted the existence of 364 languages between 1894 and 1928.

There is a major reason for the disparity in the government’s number of languages versus what the survey found: the government does not count languages that fewer than 10,000 people speak. Devy and his volunteers on the other hand combed the country to find languages such as Chaimal in Tripura, which is today spoken by just four or five people.

One of the most interesting aspects of the project is Devy’s view of language as a marker of the well being of a community. Languages are being born and dying as they evolve – note how Old English is unintelligible today, and how different is Chaucer’s Middle English from ours – and that is a natural process. But bringing attention to Indian languages with small numbers of speakers, Devy said, is a way of bringing attention to the societies that speak them, along with the well being of their people.”

via India speaks 780 languages, 220 lost in last 50 years – survey | India Insight.

Posted in India alert, Internal politics, languages | Leave a Comment »

Tags: India, Languages of India, Linguistic Survey of India, politics, research, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

08/09/2013

Army summoned to quell communal violence that kills 15 in north Indian state

Reuters: “The Indian army was called in, an unusual measure, to contain communal violence pitting Hindus against Muslims that killed at least 15 people in northern Uttar Pradesh state.

Indian army vehicles patrol on a deserted road during a curfew in Muzaffarnagar, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh September 8, 2013. REUTERS/Stringer

An army contingent of up to 800 was dispatched to the area on Saturday night, as armed gangs of Jats, a group practicing Hinduism, stormed a mosque and a village with Muslim residents, the state’s principal home secretary R.M. Srivastava said.

“We had sought assistance of the army last night after we found the violence spreading across to other villages,” Srivastava told Reuters.

“In fact, we were able to bring things under control until fresh violence broke out in (a) village Sunday morning.”

The violence erupted on Saturday following a meeting attended by Jats in Muzaffarnagar district, 140 km (90 miles) northeast of New Delhi. Police said 10 people died, including a journalist and photographer, and about 35 were injured.

Five more were killed in a fresh outbreak on Sunday morning.

A curfew was imposed in three districts,

“I would appeal to all the people there to maintain peace and do not trust or listen to any rumors,” Akhilesh Yadav, Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister, told reporters.

The Jats are demanding the rescinding of charges against members of their community in connection with a communal clash last month in which three people were killed.

Arun Kumar, a senior police official, said tensions were fuelled by an online video purporting to show the killing of two Muslim youths last month.

Local media said about 50 outbreaks of communal tension have occurred in populous Uttar Pradesh since the region’s Samajwadi (Socialist) Party came to power last year. More than 25 people have died.”

via Army summoned to quell communal violence that kills 15 in north Indian state | Reuters.

Tags: communal clashes, Muslim, muslim residents, Muzaffarnagar district, New Delhi, politics, Uttar Pradesh

06/09/2013

China urges U.N. role on Syria after U.S. says gives up

reuters: “China’s Foreign Ministry urged a role for the U.N. Security Council in resolving the crisis in Syria on Friday after the United States said it had given up trying to work with the council on Syria, accusing Russia of holding it hostage.

A Free Syrian Army fighter poses for a picture as he holds an RPG launcher in Raqqa province, eastern Syria September 4, 2013. Picture taken September 4, 2013. REUTERS/Nour Fourat

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power’s remarks on Thursday left no doubt that Washington would not seek U.N. approval for a military strike on Syria in response to an August 21 chemical attack near Damascus.

She said a draft resolution Britain submitted to the five permanent council members last week calling for a response to that attack was effectively dead.

Asked about those comments, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the Security Council needed to be used.

“China supports the important role that the U.N. Security Council plays in properly resolving the Syria issue,” Hong told a daily news briefing in Beijing.

“We hope that relevant parties can continue communications and coordination and hold deep consultations so as to resolve the relevant issue in a peaceful way,” he added.

China has called for a full and impartial investigation by U.N. chemical weapons inspectors in Syria into the August 21 attack, and has warned against pre-judging the results. It has also said that whoever uses chemical weapons had to be held accountable.

“China believes that a political solution is the only realistic way out on the Syria issue. Given the current circumstances, a political solution is of utmost importance,” Hong said.

“We also hope the international community can work together and push for the holding of an international conference on the Syria issue at an early date.”

Russia and China have both vetoed previous Western efforts to impose U.N. penalties on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

But China has also been keen to show it is not taking sides and has urged the Syrian government to talk to the opposition and take steps to meet demands for political change. It has said a transitional government should be formed.”

via China urges U.N. role on Syria after U.S. says gives up | Reuters.

Posted in China alert, GeoPolitics, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Bashar al-Assad, China, chinese foreign ministry spokesman, foreign ministry spokesman, middle-east, politics, Russia, Syria, UN Security Council, United Nations Security Council, United States

29/08/2013

Bo Xilai on trial: Settling scores

The Economist: “IN A heavily guarded courthouse in the eastern city of Jinan, the trial began on August 22nd of a politician who was once one of China’s most powerful figures. Bo Xilai, who is 64, has been accused of receiving bribes, embezzlement and abuse of power. His downfall in March 2012 caused the greatest political shock of its kind in decades.

That the trial is under way at last is a sign that Xi Jinping, who took over as China’s leader eight months after Mr Bo disappeared from public view, is confident that he can handle its ramifications. Mr Bo, like Mr Xi, is the son of one of Mao Zedong’s fellow revolutionaries. He remains popular in the parts of China where he has served, including as Communist Party chief in the 29m-strong region of Chongqing in the south-west. He is an icon of diehard Maoists and members of the “new left” who decry China’s move towards money making. Handling Mr Bo’s case without upsetting powerful families and arousing public ire (whether of Mr Bo’s fans or of the many Chinese who are aggrieved at widespread official corruption) has been Mr Xi’s challenge. As the trial began, dozens of supporters gathered nearby. Police dragged several away.

Mr Xi and his colleagues wished to choreograph the proceedings—which at the time of going to press were expected to last just a day or two—with great precision. But Mr Bo, with a characteristic feistiness, queered the pitch from the outset. He denied a charge of bribery involving payments of more than 1.1m yuan ($180,000) from a businessman in the north-eastern city of Dalian. His response to the other charges, including millions of dollars in other kickbacks, are not yet known. Foreign journalists were barred from the trial.

The allegations, even if disagreeable to Mr Bo, would have been tailored to suit all factions—including, to some extent, his own, for Mr Bo had powerful backers, including within the security forces. Speculation has also centred on whether the state tried to secure Mr Bo’s co-operation by promising not to go after his 25-year-old son, Bo Guagua, who was expensively educated in Britain and is now studying in America. The younger Mr Bo may hope one day to to avenge his father’s downfall.

via Bo Xilai on trial: Settling scores | The Economist.

Posted in China alert, corruption, Internal politics, Justice, Politics, Rule of law | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Bo Xilai, China, Chongqing, Dalian, Mao Zedong, politics, Xi JinPing

29/08/2013

India’s parliament gets its groove back, at least for now

Reuters: “(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters)

India’s notoriously disruptive parliament has been going through a productive phase in the past two days. Bills are getting passed, politicians are discussing the state of the economy and for a change, members are listening to each other as they deliver well-researched speeches.

For a house with one of the poorest records of accomplishments in Indian history, the last two days were downright atypical.

On Monday, parliament debated a $20 billion plan for nine hours to provide cheap food to two thirds of the population. For a change, the government got the main opposition party on board by incorporating some of the changes that its opponents proposed.

A similar script played out on Tuesday. Politicians from all parties discussed the state of the economy, reeling under a widening current account deficit, slowing growth and a falling currency.

The opposition party’s well thought-out arguments moved Finance Minister P. Chidambaram to admit that domestic factors indeed have played a part in creating the dismal economy, a rare statement coming from the man who usually blames the global financial meltdown for India’s woes.

Chidambaram on Tuesday urged parliamentarians to work together.

“If parliament is not able to point to the direction in which the country’s economy will go, parliament is not able to agree on, say 10 steps which the government should take today … what kind of a message will it send to the rest of the world?” Chidambaram asked the house.

“The fact is, polity of this country is divided on economic policies and that is understandable … My plea to everyone, despite our differences, can we agree upon some measures which have to be taken in order to lift the country’s economy from what it is today,” he said.

Politicians are taking note. Derek O’Brien, the famous quizmaster who is now a lawmaker from estranged government ally Trinamool Congress, tweeted: “When #Parliament works we are very,very good.(like today)…but when we are bad we are horrid.”

The Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament, led by a minority Congress-party coalition government, has a rather dismal track record. Before the ongoing Monsoon session, it passed just 39 percent of tabled bills. In five years, the Lok Sabha has passed just over 150 bills, in contrast to an average 317 bills passed by any other lower house completing over three years.

The last two days have been different. This is what voters expect their representatives to do. If lawmakers keep it up, we might have one of the most successful sessions in recent memory. One would hope that the mood extends itself into the hurly burly of the 2014 campaign season.

What remains unanswered is what changed overnight and why the opposition parties suddenly stopped disrupting the house. It would be good to know. Whatever be the reason, one hopes that the country does not go back to when “Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha adjourned for the day” was probably the most frequent breaking news headline on TV screens.”

via India’s parliament gets its groove back, at least for now | India Insight.

Posted in Economics, Good news, India alert, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Congress, current account deficit, financial meltdown, Government, India, Indian National Congress, Lok Sabha, main opposition party, p chidambaram, Parliament of India, politics, Rajya Sabha

26/08/2013

Mooncake Austerity Hits China’s Mid-Autumn Festiva

WSJ: “First baijiu, then red carpets, and now mooncakes. For Chinese government officials, the list of taboos keeps getting longer.

One month before the country celebrates its annual Mid-Autumn Festival, Chinese authorities said Wednesday that they are barring officials from buying mooncakes—a centerpiece of the holiday—as well as giving presents or hosting dinners on the public dime.

Traditionally, mooncakes are gifted (and often re-gifted) as a form of tribute during the festival, exchanged among family members as well as among companies, their clients and employees. “But this kind of polite reciprocity, when overdone, becomes a kind of squandering of cash,” ran an editorial in the People’s Daily on Thursday, praising the mooncake crackdown.

About the size of a hockey puck and traditionally stuffed with anything from red bean paste to salted egg yolk, these days, the once-humble mooncake is barely recognizable. Some are now made of solid gold and others come swathed in pure silk. Such is the luxury nature of some mooncakes that in past years, talk of a “mooncake bubble” circulated, while in 2011, China’s government proposed that workers pay income tax on the value of cakes gifted to them by their employers.

Given the frenetic pace of mooncake gift-giving, they’ve long been seen as an easy vehicle for corruption. Many environmental NGOs have also condemned the modern crop of mooncakes, criticizing their elaborate packaging as wasteful.

This week’s mooncake crackdown is part of a broader attempt to quell anger about public corruption, which in recent years has been stoked by the sight of officials gorging on lavish banquets and indulging in other excesses, including luxury watches and more. Thursday’s editorial in the People’s Daily, for example, cited the anti-mooncake move as part of President Xi Jinping’s effort to educate Party members about the evils of the “Four Winds,” i.e. “formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism and waste.”

On Thursday, some users on Sina Weibo, China’s popular Twitter-like microblogging service, though, were less than impressed. “”The system doesn’t change, these kinds of trivialities aren’t of any use,” wrote one.

Others mourned the idea that the confections were facilitating corruption. “A holiday that was once simple and pure has been transformed by China’s corrupt bureaucracy into something with a different meaning,” wrote another. “How sad.”

Still others took the opportunity to rail against mooncakes in general. Despite the holiday zeal for them, many languish uneaten for weeks after they’ve been gifted. “They’re just a mix of stuff high in fat, high in sugar, and high in additives,” wrote one user.

“They’re not tasty and they’re expensive,” added another. “No wonder that other than during the Mid-Autumn festival, people don’t eat them.””

via Mooncake Austerity Hits China’s Mid-Autumn Festival – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

Posted in China alert, corruption, Economics, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: China, Government of the People's Republic of China, Mid-Autumn Festival, Mooncake, politics, Sina Weibo, Xi JinPing

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Modi all set to be anointed BJP PM candidate

China ditches pointless awards in latest anti-waste push

Guangzhou to empty labour camps

A Chinese power struggle: Hunting tigers

India speaks 780 languages, 220 lost in last 50 years

Army summoned to quell communal violence that kills 15 in north Indian state

China urges U.N. role on Syria after U.S. says gives up

Bo Xilai on trial: Settling scores

India’s parliament gets its groove back, at least for now

Mooncake Austerity Hits China’s Mid-Autumn Festiva

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