ISSUES AND CONCERNS

At the outset wishing all our readers a wonderful new year and an eventful & promising 2012. The change that we have introduced last month in splitting the earlier long editorial appears to have gone well with some readers who have responded. The only permanent thing in this world is change. We have tried to change hoping it is for better. Feedback so far is positive. Kindly keep in touch with your inputs. We do value them. India is a happening place of all myriad things. We have dealt with most happenings under our new column ‘Month-in-Perspective". However Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retailing took the parliament by storm and went off as whimper. Why this had to be so hurriedly brought in as a bill, is unknown. But it had to beat a hasty retreat, because nobody was ready for it or at least most of the MPs wanted longer debate and more detailed discussion, since the decision would touch millions of Indians, especially those in the margins. Besides there are...

HDI & FDI – Barking up the wrong tree! On 30th Nov., newspapers carried extensive reports on the happenings in the parliament on the debate in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the multi brand retail sector. Reportedly our Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh was attending a political convention of his party’s youth wing along with the ‘Prime Minister in Waiting’ and his mother, the UPA chairperson in attendance. Speaking to this high profile youth wing, our economist Prime Minister ‘left no one in doubt that the FDI is indeed one of the best thing to happen to the country, if allowed to happen, and vigorously defended his cabinet’s approval for 51% FDI in the multi-brand retail sector’. This was reportedly a sequel to what happened in the parliament earlier on the day. Reportedly, opposition parties, who were opposing this particular invitation to foreigners to invest in retail sector, asked the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who was leading the treasury benches in the absence of...

Education must make healthy minds; not just wealthy careers. Prof. B. M. Hegde, hegdebm@gmail.com "A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us. " Ralph Waldo Emerson Education, higher or lower, should have the prime goal of making healthy minds in society in addition, of course, to making comfortable careers. Unfortunately, today the sole aim of our present education seems to be to make careers, the higher the pay the better. Smart people might not be educated in that sense but they are smarter all the same. The Tagores, Bill Gateses, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffets, Dhirubhais were too smart but were not the products of this kind of miseducation! Parents, teachers, "educationists, (so called because they own educational institutions) educational administrators, as also the governments of the day, along with the brainwashed children to day want education only to make better careers. In the knowledge society of today NO BODY thinks. Th...

GANG LEADER FOR A DAY Black and Blue Despite my utter failure as a teacher, Autry called me again for help. The stakes were a little higher this time—and, for me, so was the reward. Autry and the other staffers at the Boys & Girls Club wanted me to help write a grant proposal for the U.S. Department of Justice, which had advertised special funds being allocated for youth programs. The proposal needed to include in-depth crime statistics for the project and the surrounding neighborhood, data that was typically hard to get, since the police didn’t like to make such information public. But if I took on the project, I’d get dir5ect access to Officer Reggie Marcus—"Officer Reggie" to tenants—the local cop who had grown up in Robert Taylor himself and was devoted to making life there better. I jumped at the chance. I had met Reggie on several occasions, but now I had an opportunity to work closely with him and cultivate a genuine friendship. He was about six feet tall, as muscu...

RTI – As a Tool of Empowerment We all pay taxes. This money is taken from us with an assurance from the government that it will be used for our well-being. But nothing happens. Where does this money go? There is no water to drink in a country which has large number of water resources. The condition of the roads is pathetic, the government hospitals have no medicines in their stock, during rainy season the drainage system doesn’t work properly. Likewise every department is deeply involved in corruption. We often have to pay bribes in our interaction with government departments – be it getting a license, passport, ration card, registering an FIR etc. Sometimes even if bribe is not asked for, our work is still not done due to complacency of public officials and bureaucrats which results in our harassment and loss in cognitive energy. So far people were helpless and could only curse the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the system and be a mute spectator. But now we have the right to que...

Over 30,000 pieces of info on black money under I-T scanner New Delhi: More than 30,000 pieces of Information about black money in India have come under the scanner of the Income Tax Department. The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), under the Finance Ministry, has gathered voluminous data on suspicious transactions, the department informed a global OECD conference held here recently. Black money hoarders have also disclosed more than Rs 430 crore of unaccounted funds to the I-T department after the government received classified information from various countries on stashed funds under the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA). "30,765 pieces of domestic information about suspicious transactions has been obtained by FIU which are under investigation," Director General of I-T Investigations (Delhi) K V Chowdary said while speaking at a conference. ‘Indians pay $700m yearly as bribe’ A whopping $700mn (about Rs.3,700cr) is paid annually as bribe in India for land administ...

Euro: co-existence crisis, French Minister Paris: The European single currency could break up and Europe itself unravel if political leaders fail to tackle the region’s debt crisis, France’s minister for European affairs warned. "The situation is serious….the euro can explode and Europe unravel". Jean Leonetti told France’s Canal Plus television hours ahead of what is being seen as a crucial European summit on the issue in Brussels. He said that if possible all 27 members of the European Union should be involved in talks on tackling the debt crisis but that non-eurozone members might have to be excluded. "When there are some in the 27 who say ‘I’m not interested in what you are talking about because I never want to join the euro’," like Britain for example, "this should not cause paralysis," he said. The most difficult point of contention at the summit would be "discipline," he said, a reference to France and Germany’s efforts to force other euro...

Italian cat inherits over $15m fortune London: An Italian cat has turned world’s third richest animal by inheriting her owner’s fortune of almost £ 10 million (over $ 15 million) after the wealthy lady died aged 94. Maria Assunta, the cat’s owner, died last month aged 94 and according to lawyers entrusted with her estate, she left the fortune in property to Tommasino, a stray cat she had found and looked after because of her love for animals, the Daily Mail reported. Assunta had a large property portfolio with homes and villas across the country, as well as several bulging bank accounts and share portfolios but no living relatives. The world’s richest animal is thought to be Gunter, a German shepherd with over 90 million pounds. In 1988, British recluse Ben Rea left his fortune of 9 million pounds to his cat Blackie. Lawyers Anna Orecchioni and Giacinto Canzona say Assunta left the fortune to Tommasino in a will she wrote and deposited with them in their office in Rome in October 2009....