Thursday, November 30, 2006

Memo From India

Report Shows Muslims Near Bottom of Social Ladder

Prashanth Vishwanathan/Reuters

India has one of the world’s largest Muslim populations. Muslims in Mumbai prayed last month after Ramadan.

Published: November 29, 2006

Correction Appended

NEW DELHI, Nov. 24 — Even those who caution against “illusions of grandeur and power,” as the head of India’s governing coalition, Sonia Gandhi, did last week, cannot hide their sense of pride at the idea of India as a nation that extends the concessions of secular democracy to its many castes, creeds and faiths.

Yet that notion has come under some strain in recent days, with an official panel having concluded that Muslims, India’s largest religious minority, are “lagging behind” on most things that matter.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s office, which is reviewing the report, summarized the panel’s biting conclusion this way: “The community is relatively poor, more illiterate, has lower access to education, lower representation in public- and private-sector jobs and lower availability of bank credit for self-employment. In urban areas, the community mostly lives in slums characterized by poor municipal infrastructure.”

Muslims make up roughly 13 percent of India’s population of 1.1 billion, and their numbers are nearly equal to the entire population of Pakistan, which was carved out of British India nearly 60 years ago as the homeland of the subcontinent’s Muslims. Soul-searching about Muslim rights and well-being in this country, which has witnessed periodic outbreaks of religious violence, has been a recurrent leitmotif ever since.

The latest findings have prompted fresh debate. In an editorial in The Indian Express, an English-language daily, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, the president of the Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, suggested that the government’s panel had revealed “the hollowness of our concept of republican citizenship.”

“What is at stake,” Mr. Mehta said, “is not just uplifting this or that group, but the very idea of India itself: whether it has the capacity for transcending the cant, indifference and identity traps that have brought us to this pass.”

The report is expected to be made public soon, but leaks in the last several weeks have already turned its contents into political fodder. Trial balloons have been floated about extending affirmative action benefits originally devised to uplift low-caste Hindus and others considered “backward,” by offering additional set-asides in education and employment for Muslims.

The mark of “backwardness” is a boon in this country, where a government job can lift a family’s fortunes forever, just as it is a vital part of political arithmetic: Secure jobs for a group, the reasoning goes, and you secure its loyalty at the polls.

A number of Muslim religious and political leaders have already begun to advocate quotas for Muslims. But the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has pointed out that Indian law prohibits faith-based quotas.

The secretary of the panel that issued the report, Abusaleh Shariff, said in an interview this week that in some states, education and poverty indicators showed that Muslims had fallen behind even low-caste Hindus. Mr. Shariff said the panel recommended, among other things, free and compulsory education up to age 14, as well as financial support to promote industries in which Muslims are concentrated, like textiles.

The findings of the panel, headed by a retired high court judge, Rajinder Sachar, are expected to add to sparring over the Muslim vote, particularly in the elections to be held next year in India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, where Muslims are a vital chunk of the electorate. The report will become public when Mr. Singh submits it to Parliament, possibly during its current session.

Among the panel’s most damning statistics, as reported by The Indian Express, are that in many states Muslims are significantly overrepresented in prison. In the western state of Maharashtra, for instance, Muslims make up 10.6 percent of the population but 32.4 percent of those convicted or facing trial. In the famed national bureaucracy, the Indian Administrative Service, Muslims made up only 2 percent of officers in 2006. Among district judges in 15 states surveyed, 2.7 percent were Muslim.

Educational disparities were among the most striking. Among Muslims, Mr. Shariff said, the literacy rate is about 59 percent, compared with more than 65 percent among Indians as a whole. On average, a Muslim child attends school for three years and four months, compared with a national average of four years.

Less than 4 percent of Muslims graduate from school, compared with 6 percent of the total population. Less than 2 percent of the students at the elite Indian Institutes of Technology are Muslim. Equally revealing, only 4 percent of Muslim children attend madrasas, Mr. Shariff said.

The gaps in employment are likely to be among the most politically explosive. Muslims appear to be overrepresented in the informal sector of day laborers and street vendors and underrepresented in the public sector. Muslims secured about 15 percent of all government jobs, considerably less than the share filled by “backward” castes and Dalits, those who were considered “untouchables” in the Hindu caste system.

Whatever action the government decides to take, it will have to contend with a peculiar dimension of Muslim identity here. Since they are mostly converts from Hinduism or descendants of converts, Muslims in India are riven by caste. In other words, there are Muslim Dalits, as well as Muslims who are considered “backward.”

To ignore those divides and entitle all Muslims to the same affirmative action benefits, Imtiaz Ahmad, a retired professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University argued, would be to reward only those at the upper reaches of the Muslim social ladder.

Many well-to-do Muslims, he said, particularly those with access to education, have benefited from the Indian economic advance in recent years. The Muslim community, he and other scholars point out, is made up of a small elite, vast numbers of poor people and very few people in between.

Whether India can deliver the fruits of economic progress to the many Muslims at the bottom of the ladder remains a crucial question.

At least, Mr. Ahmad argued, India has managed to address Muslim concerns without what he called the “coercive apparatus” that some European countries have adopted. He compared India’s approach with that of the Netherlands, which recently banned the wearing of the Muslim burqa, or face-covering veil, in public places.

“There are many things we can say about Indian democracy,” Mr. Ahmad said. “But it has given assurances, to minorities included, that things are negotiable.”

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

Correction: Nov. 30, 2006

The Memo From India article yesterday, about the social and economic disadvantages faced by India’s Muslim minority, referred incorrectly to a step taken by the Netherlands government aimed at integrating that country’s Muslim minority. The government has proposed banning the wearing of the Muslim burqa, or face-covering veil, in public places; it has not banned it.

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Sweden Is Top Democracy; Italy Is `Flawed,' Economist Says

By Alex Morales

Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Sweden is the world's most democratic nation while Italy, a member of the Group of Seven industrialized nations, ranks as a ``flawed'' democracy and fails to make the top category of countries, the Economist said.

Countries are split into four regime types determined by their democratic credentials, according to a list e-mailed late yesterday by the magazine. The classifications are: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes. The U.S. at 17th, and U.K., 23rd, ranked in the bottom half of the full democracies.

``A decline in civil liberties and malfunctioning of government accounts for the U.S. position,'' the Economist said. ``In the U.K., a shocking decline in political participation, alongside some erosion of civil liberties, is the main reason for the comparatively modest ranking.''

The Economist Intelligence Unit awarded 167 countries and territories marks from 1 to 10 for 60 indicators across five broad categories: electoral process, functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties.

The top level, full democracies, comprises 28 countries and is dominated by members of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Sweden beats Iceland and the Netherlands into first place, while France is ranked lower than the U.K., at 24th, and Italy, 34th, doesn't make the top level, falling among the ``flawed democracies.''

``The rating for France is also comparatively low as a result of modest scores for the functioning of government, political participation and political culture,'' the Economist said. ``Italy performs even worse, and falls in the flawed democracies category -- as a result of problems in functioning of government and the electoral process, as well as weaknesses in the political culture.''

Iraq Score

Two Latin American nations, Costa Rica and Uruguay, made the top category, as did the Indian Ocean island nation Mauritius. Other countries ranked as ``flawed'' included Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Israel and the world's largest democracy, India.

Countries including Lebanon, 85th, Russia, 102nd, and Iraq, 112th, fall in the third class of democracies, hybrid regimes.

Iraq scores ``0'' in the functioning government category, a distinction shared only with Afghanistan and Chad. Iraq's score for political participation is higher than Britain's and level with Japan's. The Palestinian Authority, also classed as a flawed democracy, scores level with Israel on political participation, and above every entry in that sub-category bar the top 14 in the overall ranking.

Ranking Table

North Korea props up the table in 167th, just behind the Central African Republic, Chad, Togo and Myanmar, which, along with most Middle Eastern nations, fall in the bottom group of countries, authoritarian regimes.

The following is a table of the five most democratic nations according to the Economist's ranking, and selected other nations, along with their score (from 1 to 10)

Rank Country Score
1. Sweden 9.88
2. Iceland 9.71
3. Netherlands 9.66
4. Norway 9.55
5. Denmark 9.52
16. Spain 8.34
17. U.S. 8.22
20= Japan 8.15
23. U.K. 8.08
24. France 8.07
29. South Africa 7.91
34. Italy 7.73
35. India 7.68
42. Brazil 7.38
102. Russia 5.02
112. Iraq 4.01
138. China 2.97
167. North Korea 1.03

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: November 21, 2006 05:22 EST
Birthday bash on the wrong tracks


ALLAHABAD: Samajwadi Party workers here took the cake for a highly imaginative celebration. They took it to the railway line, stopped a train to cut it and celebrate chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav's 67th birthday.

As the members of Samajwadi Party Chhatra Sabha unleashed the innovative celebration at the city's railway station on Wednesday, the passengers of the Kanpur-bound 5004 Chauri Chaura Express seemed in no mood to join the party.

The drama was inacted on platform No 2 at 8.30 am in the morning. For obvious reasons the railway officials and the police looked the other way.

The train and its passengers were held hostage for 17 minutes after its schedule departure time.

The handful of workers had even organised a 'panditji' to conduct a 'puja' on the railway tracks. The 'panditji' gleefully kept chanting 'mantras' as RPF and GRP looked on helplessly.
CPM finally cedes Arunachal to India
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2006 02:55:32 AM]

NEW DELHI: Under attack for its non-committal stand on China’s claim over Arunachal Pradesh, the CPM
effected a subtle change of tack on Friday. For the first time since the controversy surrounding Chinese
ambassador Sun Yuxi’s statements broke out, the party admitted in Parliament that Arunachal Pradesh was
“an integral part of India”.
With the BJP targeting the CPM for being more beholden to China than India, the clash between the two
political sides rocked Rajya Sabha as the BJP repeated its demand for a parliamentary resolution on the
issue.
Leader of the Opposition Jaswant Singh accused the CPM of not accepting that “China had committed an
aggression” and hit out at the government as well as for “mortgaging” its foreign policy to the CPM. He went
on to allege that the CPM did not accept India as its motherland and always looked up to Beijing and
Moscow.
His charge was met with loud protests from Left benches with CPM leader and politbureau member Sitaram
Yechury terming Mr Singh’s statements a “painful allegation”. He added: “I assure the House of our stand that
Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of India.”
Lashing out at the senior BJP leader, Mr Yechury asked him not to “mislead the House”. “This is an issue of
dispute” he continued, explaining that is how it had been since 1962, given that China did not accept
Arunachal Pradesh as a part of India. He also mentioned that the matter had to be resolved through
“negotiations and discussions” repeating the formal CPM position on the issue.
When the BJP benches erupted at the mention of the term “issue of dispute”, Mr Yechury retorted by
declaring that his party was “not going to be bulldozed by intolerance”. In the ensuing din during zero hour,
the House was adjourned till 2 pm.
In the House, Mr Singh did not confine his attack to the CPM, and went for the government as well. He said
that “timidity” on part of the government in expressing a robust commitment to the country’s territorial
integrity was not the sign of a good foreign policy.
This led to Congress members V Narayanaswamy and Rajeev Shukla protesting against Mr Singh’s remarks
in the House. Party spokesman Abhishek Singhvi later charged the BJP with “hypocrisy” and said there was
no need for any resolution on Arunachal Pradesh. “The Congress would like to charge the BJP with
irresponsible digression of Parliament’s time,” Mr Singhvi told the media in Parliament.
The CPM’s stand vis-à-vis China’s claims on Arunachal Pradesh can be traced back to former party chief
EMS Namboodripad’s partiality towards China. The late leader had refused to condemn the 1962 Chinese
aggression, taking a pro-Beijing stand terming the war as a conflict between a socialist and a capitalist
country. Mr Yechury’s words had seemed imbued with Namboodripad’s ideas when in response to the
Chinese ambassadors claim on Arunachal Pradesh he had said recently:
“These are historical issues. These are disputes. That’s why these issues are being discussed”. The CPM was
the lone political voice that has not condemned ambassador Sun’s statement that Arunachal Pradesh
“belonged” to China.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Substance in Red Wine Extends Life of Mice

Published: November 1, 2006

Can you have your cake and eat it? Is there a free lunch after all, red wine included? Researchers at the Harvard Medical School and the National Institute on Aging report that a natural substance found in red wine, known as resveratrol, offsets the bad effects of a high-calorie diet in mice and significantly extends their lifespan.


Doug Hansen/National Institute on Aging

Mice from a study done by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the National Institute on Aging on the effects of resveratrol.

Their report, published electronically today in Nature, implies that very large daily doses of resveratrol could offset the unhealthy, high-calorie diet thought to underlie the rising toll of obesity in the United States and elsewhere, should people respond to the drug as mice do.

Resveratrol is found in the skin of grapes and in red wine and is conjectured to be a partial explanation for the French paradox, the puzzling fact that people in France tend to enjoy a high-fat diet yet suffer less heart disease than Americans.

The researchers fed one group of mice a diet in which 60 percent of calories came from fat. The diet started when the mice, all males, were 1 year old, which is middle-aged in mouse terms. As expected, the mice soon developed signs of impending diabetes, with grossly enlarged livers, and started to die much sooner than mice fed a standard diet.

Another group of mice was fed the identical high-fat diet but with a large daily dose of resveratrol. The resveratrol did not stop them from putting on weight and growing as tubby as the other fat-eating mice. But it averted the high levels of glucose and insulin in the bloodstream, which are warning signs of diabetes, and it kept the mice’s livers at normal size.

Even more strikingly, the substance sharply extended the mice’s lifetimes. Those fed resveratrol along with the high-fat diet died many months later than the mice on high fat alone, and at the same rate as mice on a standard healthy diet. They had all the pleasures of gluttony but paid none of the price.

The researchers, led by David Sinclair and Joseph Baur at the Harvard Medical School and by Rafael de Cabo at the National Institute on Aging, also tried to estimate the effect of resveratrol on the mice’s physical quality of life. They gauged how well the mice could walk along a rotating rod before falling off, a test of their motor skills. The mice on resveratrol did better as they grew older, ending up with much the same staying power on the rod as mice fed a normal diet.

The researchers hope their findings will have relevance to people too. Their study shows, they conclude, that orally taken drugs “at doses achievable in humans can safely reduce many of the negative consequences of excess caloric intake, with an overall improvement in health and survival.”

Several experts said that people wondering if they should take resveratrol should wait until more results were in, particularly safety tests in humans. “It’s a pretty exciting area but these are early days,” said Dr. Ronald Kahn, president of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. Information about resveratrol’s effects on human metabolism should be available in a year or so, he said, adding, “Have another glass of pinot noir — that’s as far as I’d take it right now.”

The mice were fed a hefty dose of resveratrol, 24 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. Red wine has about 1.5 to 3 milligrams of resveratrol per liter, so a 150-pound person would need to drink from 1,500 to 3,000 bottles of red wine a day to get such a dose. Whatever good the resveratrol might do would be negated by the sheer amount of alcohol.

Dr. Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, which helped support the study, also said that people should wait for the results of safety testing. Substances that are safe and beneficial in small doses, like vitamins, sometimes prove to be harmful when taken in high doses, he said.

One person who is not following this prudent advice, however, is Dr. Sinclair, the chief author of the study. He has long been taking resveratrol, though at a dose of only 5 milligrams per kilogram. Mice given that amount in a second feeding trial have shown similar, but less dramatic, results as those on the 24 milligram a day dose, he said.

Dr. Sinclair has had a physician check his metabolism, because many resveratrol preparations contain possibly hazardous impurities, but so far no ill effects have come to light. His wife, his parents, and “half my lab” are also taking resveratrol, he said.

Dr. Sinclair declined to name his source of resveratrol. Many companies sell the substance, along with claims that rivals’ preparations are inactive. One such company, Longevinex, sells an extract of red wine and knotweed that contains an unspecified amount of resveratrol. But each capsule is equivalent to “5 to 15 5-ounce glasses of the best red wine,” the company’s Web page asserts.

Dr. Sinclair is the founder of a company, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, that has developed several chemicals designed to mimic the role of resveratrol but at much lower doses. Sirtris has begun clinical trials of one of these compounds, an improved version of resveratrol, with the aim of seeing if it helps control glucose levels in people with diabetes. “We believe you cannot reach therapeutic levels in man with ordinary resveratrol,” said Dr. Christoph Westphal, the company’s chief executive.

Behind the resveratrol test is a considerable degree of scientific theory, some of it well established and some yet to be proved. Dr. Sinclair’s initial interest in resveratrol had nothing to do with red wine. It derived from work by Leonard Guarente of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who in 1955 found a gene that controlled the longevity of yeast, a single-celled fungus. Dr. Guarente and Dr. Sinclair, who had come from Australia to work as a post-doctoral student in Dr. Guarente’s lab, discovered the mechanism by which the gene makes yeast cells live longer. The gene is known as sir-2 in yeast, sir standing for silent information regulator, and its equivalent in mice is called SIRT-1.

Dr. Guarente then found that the gene’s protein needs a common metabolite to activate it and he developed the theory that the gene, by sensing the level of metabolic activity, mediates a phenomenon of great interest to researchers in aging, the greater life span caused by caloric restriction.

Researchers have known since 1935 that mice fed a calorically restricted diet — one with all necessary vitamins and nutrients but 40 percent fewer calories — live up to 50 percent longer than mice on ordinary diets.

This low-calorie-provoked increase in longevity occurs in many organisms and seems to be an ancient survival strategy. When food is plentiful, live in the fast lane and breed prolifically. When famine strikes, switch resources to body maintenance and live longer so as to ride out the famine.

Researchers had long supposed that the increase in longevity was a passive phenomenon: during famine or on a low-calorie diet, organisms would have lower metabolism and produce less of the violent chemicals that oxidize tissues. But Dr. Guarente and Dr. Sinclair believed that longer life was attained by an active program that triggered specific protective steps against the diseases common in old age. It was because these diseases were averted in calorie restriction, they believed, that animals lived longer.

Most people find it impossible to keep to a diet with 40 percent fewer calories than usual. So if caloric restriction really does make people as well as mice live longer — which is plausible but not yet proved — it would be desirable to have some drug that activated the SIRT-1 gene’s protein, tricking it into thinking that days of famine lay ahead.

In 2003 Dr. Sinclair, by then in his own lab, devised a way to test a large number of chemicals for their ability to mimic caloric restriction in people by activating SIRT-1. The champion was resveratrol, already well known for its possible health benefits.

The experiment reported today tests one aspect of caloric restriction, the reduction in metabolic disease. Calorically restricted mice also suffer less cancer and heart disease, and there is some evidence that neurodegenerative diseases are also held at bay.

Critics point out that resveratrol is a powerful chemical that acts in many different ways in cells. The new experiment, they say, does not prove that resveratrol negated the effects of a high-calorie diet by activating SIRT-1. Indeed, they are not convinced that resveratrol activates SIRT-1 at all. “It hasn’t really been clearly shown, the way a biochemist would want to see it, that resveratrol can activate sirtuin,” said Matt Kaeberlein, a former student of Dr. Guarente who now does research at the University of Washington in Seattle. Sirtuin is the protein produced by the SIRT-1 gene.

Dr. Sinclair said experiments at Sirtris have essentially wrapped up this point. But they have not yet been published, so under the rules of scientific debate he cannot use them to support his position. In his Nature article he therefore has to concede, “Whether resveratrol acts directly or indirectly through Sir2 in vivo is currently a subject of debate.”

Given that caloric restriction forces a tradeoff between fertility and lifespan, resveratrol might be expected to reduce fertility in mice. For reasons not yet clear, Dr. Sinclair said he saw no such effect in his experiment.

If resveratrol does act by prodding the sirtuins into action, then there will be much interest in the new class of sirtuin activators now being tested by Sirtris. Dr. Westphal, the company’s chief executive, has no practical interest in the longevity-promoting effects of sirtuins and caloric restriction. For the Food and Drug Administration, if for no one else, aging is not a disease and death is not an end-point.

Generally, the F.D.A. will only approve drugs that treat diseases in measurable ways, so Dr. Westphal hopes to show his sirtuin activators will improve the indicators of specific diseases, starting with diabetes.

“We think that if we can harness the benefits of caloric restriction, we wouldn’t simply have ways of making people live longer, but an entirely new therapeutic strategy to address the diseases of aging,” Dr. Guarente said.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Across Europe, Worries on Islam Spread to Center

Published: October 11, 2006

BRUSSELS, Oct. 10 — Europe appears to be crossing an invisible line regarding its Muslim minorities: more people in the political mainstream are arguing that Islam cannot be reconciled with European values.

“You saw what happened with the pope,” said Patrick Gonman, 43, the owner of Raga, a funky wine bar in downtown Antwerp, 25 miles from here. “He said Islam is an aggressive religion. And the next day they kill a nun somewhere and make his point.

“Rationality is gone.”

Mr. Gonman is hardly an extremist. In fact, he organized a protest last week in which 20 bars and restaurants closed on the night when a far-right party with an anti-Muslim message held a rally nearby.

His worry is shared by centrists across Europe angry at terror attacks in the name of religion on a continent that has largely abandoned it, and disturbed that any criticism of Islam or Muslim immigration provokes threats of violence.

For years those who raised their voices were mostly on the far right. Now those normally seen as moderates — ordinary people as well as politicians — are asking whether once unquestioned values of tolerance and multiculturalism should have limits.

Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain, a prominent Labor politician, seemed to sum up the moment when he wrote last week that he felt uncomfortable addressing women whose faces were covered with a veil. The veil, he wrote, is a “visible statement of separation and difference.”

When Pope Benedict XVI made the speech last month that included a quotation calling aspects of Islam “evil and inhuman,” it seemed to unleash such feelings. Muslims berated him for stigmatizing their culture, while non-Muslims applauded him for bravely speaking a hard truth.

The line between open criticism of another group or religion and bigotry can be a thin one, and many Muslims worry that it is being crossed more and more.

Whatever the motivations, “the reality is that views on both sides are becoming more extreme,” said Imam Wahid Pedersen, a prominent Dane who is a convert to Islam. “It has become politically correct to attack Islam, and this is making it hard for moderates on both sides to remain reasonable.” Mr. Pedersen fears that onetime moderates are baiting Muslims, the very people they say should integrate into Europe.

The worries about extremism are real. The Belgian far-right party, Vlaams Belang, took 20.5 percent of the vote in city elections last Sunday, five percentage points higher than in 2000. In Antwerp, its base, though, its performance improved barely, suggesting to some experts that its power might be peaking.

In Austria this month, right-wing parties also polled well, on a campaign promise that had rarely been made openly: that Austria should start to deport its immigrants. Vlaams Belang, too, has suggested “repatriation” for immigrants who do not made greater efforts to integrate.

The idea is unthinkable to mainstream leaders, but many Muslims still fear that the day — or at least a debate on the topic — may be a terror attack away.

“I think the time will come,” said Amir Shafe, 34, a Pakistani who earns a good living selling clothes at a market in Antwerp. He deplores terrorism and said he himself did not sense hostility in Belgium. But he said, “We are now thinking of going back to our country, before that time comes.”

Many experts note that there is a deep and troubled history between Islam and Europe, with the Crusaders and the Ottoman Empire jostling each other for centuries and bloodily defining the boundaries of Christianity and Islam. A sense of guilt over Europe’s colonial past and then World War II, when intolerance exploded into mass murder, allowed a large migration to occur without any uncomfortable debates over the real differences between migrant and host.

Then the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, jolted Europe into new awareness and worry.

The subsequent bombings in Madrid and London, and the murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Dutch-born Moroccan stand as examples of the extreme. But many Europeans — even those who generally support immigration — have begun talking more bluntly about cultural differences, specifically about Muslims’ deep religious beliefs and social values, which are far more conservative than those of most Europeans on issues like women’s rights and homosexuality.

“A lot of people, progressive ones — we are not talking about nationalists or the extreme right — are saying, ‘Now we have this religion, it plays a role and it challenges our assumptions about what we learned in the 60’s and 70’s,’ ” said Joost Lagendik, a Dutch member of the European Parliament for the Green Left Party, who is active on Muslim issues.

“So there is this fear,” he said, “that we are being transported back in a time machine where we have to explain to our immigrants that there is equality between men and women, and gays should be treated properly. Now there is the idea we have to do it again.”

Now Europeans are discussing the limits of tolerance, the right with increasing stridency and the left with trepidation.

Austrians in their recent election complained about public schools in Vienna being nearly full with Muslim students and blamed the successive governments that allowed it to happen.

Some Dutch Muslims have expressed support for insurgents in Iraq over Dutch peacekeepers there, on the theory that their prime loyalty is to a Muslim country under invasion.

So strong is the fear that Dutch values of tolerance are under siege that the government last winter introduced a primer on those values for prospective newcomers to Dutch life: a DVD briefly showing topless women and two men kissing. The film does not explicitly mention Muslims, but its target audience is as clear as its message: embrace our culture or leave.

Perhaps most wrenching has been the issue of free speech and expression, and the growing fear that any criticism of Islam could provoke violence.

In France last month, a high school teacher went into hiding after receiving death threats for writing an article calling the Prophet Muhammad “a merciless warlord, a looter, a mass murderer of Jews and a polygamist.” In Germany a Mozart opera with a scene of Muhammad’s severed head was canceled because of security fears.

With each incident, mainstream leaders are speaking more plainly. “Self-censorship does not help us against people who want to practice violence in the name of Islam,” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said in criticizing the opera’s cancellation. “It makes no sense to retreat.”

The backlash is revealing itself in other ways. Last month the British home secretary, John Reid, called on Muslim parents to keep a close watch on their children. “There’s no nice way of saying this,” he told a Muslim group in East London. “These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombing, grooming them to kill themselves to murder others.”

Many Muslims say this new mood is suddenly imposing expectations that never existed before that Muslims be exactly like their European hosts.

Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese-born activist here in Belgium, said that for years Europeans had emphasized “citizenship and human rights,” the notion that Muslim immigrants had the responsibility to obey the law but could otherwise live with their traditions.

“Then someone comes and says it’s different than that,” said Mr. Jahjah, who opposes assimilation. “You have to dump your culture and religion. It’s a different deal now.”

Lianne Duinberke, 34, who works at a market in the racially mixed northern section of Antwerp, said: “Before I was very eager to tell people I was married to a Muslim. Now I hesitate.” She has been with her husband, a Tunisian, for 12 years, and they have three children.

Many Europeans, she said, have not been accepting of Muslims, especially since 9/11. On the other hand, she said, Muslims truly are different culturally: No amount of explanation about free speech could convince her husband that the publication of cartoons lampooning Muhammad in a Danish newspaper was in any way justified.

When asked if she was optimistic or pessimistic about the future of Muslim immigration in Europe , she found it hard to answer. She finally gave a defeated smile. “I am trying to be optimistic,” she said. “But if you see the global problems before the people, then you really can’t be.”

Dan Bilefsky reported from Brussels, and Ian Fisher from Rome. Contributing were Sarah Lyall and Alan Cowell from London, Mark Landler from Frankfurt, Peter Kiefer from Rome, Renwick McLean from Madrid and Maia de la Baume from Paris.

Friday, September 08, 2006

India's downtrodden disabled find power in the law

By Daniel Sorid
Reuters
Friday, September 8, 2006; 8:44 AM

BANGALORE (Reuters) - When disabled Hindu worshipers in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu were blocked from entering temples with their wheelchairs and crutches, Meenakshi Balasubramanian knew she had the law on her side.

The disabled rights activist, who herself has polio, sued the temple authorities in the state's high court, and won.

Today, she said, temples must provide wheelchairs to disabled visitors if they ban them from bringing in their own medical equipment on the basis the devices are ritually impure.

"I do feel it's our right, a religious right, a fundamental right," Balasubramanian said. "We need to be allowed to worship the way we want to."

Tired of waiting for the government to safeguard their rights to pray, work, learn and travel, India's 22 million disabled people are increasingly turning to the courts.

So far, the strategy has yielded some surprising victories.

In New Delhi, a disability activist forced state-owned Indian Airlines to provide wheelchair lifts at airports in a case that went to the Supreme Court.

And legal action in New Delhi and Mumbai has removed barriers for wheelchair users and the blind at election polling booths across the country.

DISABLED CHILD LEFT BEHIND

The activism has called attention to the weak implementation of the country's 1995 disability act, which requires government job slots, accessibility of public places and free education.

Many of the landmark law's provisions are not implemented. Activists blame a culture of passivity among disability organizations that survive on government handouts and charity.

"They are now demanding their rights," said Rajul Padmanabhan, the director of Vidya Sagar, a group based in Chennai. "Cap-in-hand begging is now out."

While rights groups have made some progress, the law's failings are easy to spot.

Vasim Khan, a polio victim who lives in India's technology capital of Bangalore, rides to school on a wooden plank with wheels that he propels by scraping his palms against the ground. Once there, he crawls up 24 steps to reach his classroom.

Vasim, the 10-year-old son of an impoverished tomato seller, has received few of the benefits of the landmark disability act.

While he does get a free education, he has no wheelchair to get him to school or a wheelchair ramp to access the building and his teachers are not trained to teach the disabled.

A quiet child who has difficulty reading and writing, Vasim experiences daily pain.

"It makes my wrists hurt," he said, holding out hands swollen from the strain of pushing his wooden board to get around.

NO MORE "BEGGING BOWL"

If India's disability rights movement has a founder, it may be Javed Abidi, a former journalist who now directs the National Center for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People, based in New Delhi.

Abidi's late-1990s case against Indian Airlines marked a turning point for the disabled movement, touching off dozens of lawsuits across the country.

Abidi, who is wheelchair bound, found trips to the airport were a nightmare.

Unable to access the building because there were no ramps or machines to hoist his wheelchair above the stairs, Abidi had to be carried to the airport door by four untrained cargo loaders in what he said was a frightening and humiliating experience.

In 1998, the Supreme Court decided in his favor in a ruling that helped convince Abidi that taking the initiative could give the disability act some bite.

Since then, he's led sit-ins outside politicians' homes, gone on hunger strikes, and published an online newsletter that seeks to embarrass the establishment. An article from a recent issue is entitled, "Born into bondage in 'Free India'."

"Earlier, the disabled people and their leadership by and large went to the powers that be with a begging bowl to seek favors," Abidi said in a telephone interview.

Helping the disabled are established legal centers like the Human Rights Law Network, a New Delhi-based group of lawyers and activists that has helped Abidi and others like him.

Rajive Raturi, the network's senior officer for disabled issues, said it filed 14 public interest lawsuits on disabled rights issues last year compared to just a handful in past years.

Still, he said, India's disability movement is in a nascent stage when contrasted with countries like the United States.

It has yet to reach the country's rural areas, where more than 70 percent of the disabled live.

Many rural disabled are left to toil in their homes, bed-ridden, without access to basic services.

"Whatever action is happening is only happening in the metro cities," Raturi said. "In the villages, knowledge about the (disability) act is absolutely minimal."

The momentum in the cities is, however, palpable.

Three years ago, Vidya Sagar, originally a school for children with neurological problems, formed a legal unit that represents disabled people around South India.

Balasubramanian, who led the case against the temple authorities, is the assistant director.

She and her three colleagues, each of whom has a disability, have sued Chennai's bus system and the national rail system, and are now laying the groundwork for legal action in India's tsunami-hit Andaman Islands.

"We are very much optimistic because it's our right," she said. "We need only to take it."

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

September 4, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor

The Summer Next Time

Palm Desert, Calif.

IN late May, for those of us who teach, the summer stretches out like the great expanse of freedom it was in grammar school. Ah, the days on the beach! The books we will read! The adventures we will have!

But before hunkering down to months of leisurely lolling around a pool slathered in S.P.F. 80, we need to take care of a few things: see what got buried in the e-mail pile over the course of the year, write a few letters of recommendation, and finally get to those book reviews we agreed to do. A few leftover dissertation chapters. The syllabuses and book orders for next year’s classes. Then those scholarly articles we were snookered into writing when the deadlines were far, far in the future — deadlines that now, magically, are receding into the past. My God, did I really tell someone I would write an article called “Teaching Claude McKay”? Before we know it, the summer is eaten up, we’re still behind on our e-mail, and the fall semester looms.

On paper, the academic life looks great. As many as 15 weeks off in the summer, four in the winter, one in the spring, and then, usually, only three days a week on campus the rest of the time. Anybody who tells you this wasn’t part of the lure of a job in higher education is lying. But one finds out right away in graduate school that in fact the typical professor logs an average of 60 hours a week, and the more successful professors work even more — including not just 14-hour days during the school year, but 10-hour days in the summer as well.

Why, then, does there continue to be a glut of fresh Ph.D.’s? It isn’t the pay scale, which, with a few lucky exceptions, offers the lowest years-of-education-to-income ratio possible. It isn’t really the work itself, either. Yes, teaching and research are rewarding, but we face as much drudgery as in any professional job. Once you’ve read 10,000 freshman essays, you’ve read them all.

But we academics do have something few others possess in this postindustrial world: control over our own time. All the surveys point to this as the most common factor in job satisfaction. The jobs in which decisions are made and the pace set by machines provide the least satisfaction, while those, like mine, that foster at least the illusion of control provide the most.

Left to our own devices, we seldom organize our time with 8-to-5 discipline. The pre-industrial world of agricultural and artisan labor was structured by what the historian E. P. Thompson calls “alternate bouts of intense labor and of idleness wherever men were in control of their working lives.” Agricultural work was seasonal, interrupted by rain, forced into hyperactivity by the threat of rain, and determined by other uncontrollable natural processes. The force of long cultural habit ensured that the change from such discontinuous tasks to the regimented labor of the factory never went particularly smoothly.

In 1877 a New York cigar manufacturer grumbled that his cigar makers could never be counted on to do a straight shift’s work. They would “come down to the shop in the morning, roll a few cigars,” he complained to The New York Herald, “and then go to a beer saloon and play pinochle or some other game.” The workers would return when they pleased, roll a few more cigars, and then revisit the saloon, all told “working probably two or three hours a day.” Cigar makers in Milwaukee went on strike in 1882 simply to preserve their right to leave the shop at any time without their foreman’s permission.

In this the cigar workers were typical. American manufacturing laborers came and left for the day at different times. “Monday,” one manufacturer complained, was always “given up to debauchery,” and on Saturdays, brewery wagons came right to the factory, encouraging workers to celebrate payday. Daily breaks for “dramming” were common, with workers coming and going from the work place as they pleased. Their workdays were often, by 20th-century standards, riddled with breaks for meals, snacks, wine, brandy and reading the newspaper aloud to fellow workers.

An owner of a New Jersey iron mill made these notations in his diary over the course of a single week:

“All hands drunk.”

“Jacob Ventling hunting.”

“Molders all agree to quit work and went to the beach.”

“Peter Cox very drunk.”

“Edward Rutter off a-drinking.”

At the shipyards, too, workers stopped their labor at irregular intervals and drank heavily. One ship’s carpenter in the mid-19th century described an almost hourly round of breaks for cakes, candy and whiskey, while some of his co-workers “sailed out pretty regularly 10 times a day on the average” to the “convenient grog-shops.” Management attempts to stop such midday drinking breaks routinely met with strikes and sometimes resulted in riots. During much of the 19th century, there were more strikes over issues of time-control than there were about pay or working hours.

I was recently offered a non-teaching job that would have almost doubled my salary, but which would have required me to report to an office in standard 8-to-5 fashion. I turned it down, and for a moment I felt like the circus worker in the joke: he follows the elephant with a shovel, and when offered another job responds, “What, and give up show business?”

Really, though, I’m more like Jacob Ventling and Edward Rutter. I don’t go out 10 times a day for a dram of rum, but I could. And in fact, maybe I will. Next summer.

Tom Lutz is the author of “Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers and Bums in America.”

Saturday, September 02, 2006

the nooclear deal


Jimmy Carter's slightly skewed ideas about a nuclear deal with India

http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:78HS0DS8qnUJ:www.cartercenter.org/doc2335.htm+washingtonpost+and+india&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=10

September 1, 2006

A Younger India Is Flexing Its Industrial Brawn

PUNE, India — India’s economic advancement no longer rests on telephone call centers and computer programmers.

Among villages with thatch-roofed huts and dirt roads on the outskirts of this city in central India, John Deere and LG Electronics have recently built factories turning out tractors and color television sets for sale in India and for export to the United States.

In Hazira, in northwestern India, where some residents still rely on camels to carry traders’ goods, the Essar Group is making steel to be used for ventilation shafts in Philadelphia, high-rise structural beams in Chicago and car engine mountings in Detroit.

For decades, India followed a route to economic development strikingly different from that of countries like Japan, South Korea or China. While its Asian rivals placed their bets on manufacturing and exports, India focused on its domestic economy and grew more slowly with an emphasis on services.

But all that is starting to change.

India’s annual growth in manufacturing output, at 9 percent and accelerating, is close to catching growth in services, at 10 percent. Exports of manufactured goods to the United States are now rising faster in percentage terms than China’s, although from a much smaller base. More than two-thirds of foreign investment in the last year has gone into manufacturing in India, not services.

“Saying we are a back office and China is a factory is a backhanded compliment,” said Kamal Nath, India’s minister of commerce and industry. “It’s not really correct.”

Indeed, in interviews at 18 Indian factories and other businesses in 10 cities and villages scattered across the length and breadth of the nation, the picture that emerges is of a country being driven by advances in manufacturing to a much brisker pace of economic growth.

A prime reason India is now developing into the world’s next big industrial power is that a number of global manufacturers are already looking ahead to a serious demographic squeeze facing China. Because of China’s “one child” policy, family sizes have been shrinking there since the 1980’s, so fewer young people will be available soon for factory labor.

India is not expected to pass China in total population until 2030. But India will have more young workers aged 20 to 24 by 2013; the International Labor Organization predicts that by 2020, India will have 116 million workers in this age bracket to China’s 94 million.

India’s young population will also make it a huge and growing market for years to come, while the engineering skills and English skills of its educated elite will make it competitive across a wide range of industries. So even though India remains a difficult place to do business, several multinationals have been placing big bets on India in hopes of taking advantage of this shifting global dynamic.

General Motors and Motorola are preparing to build plants in western and southern India. Posco of South Korea and Mittal Steel of the Netherlands have each announced plans to erect giant steel mills in eastern India, where Reliance of India will soon construct one of the world’s largest coal-fired power plants.

They are finding India’s labor force well suited to their goals. When LG set out in 2005 to fill 458 assembly line jobs at its factory here at a starting wage of $90 a month, it required that each applicant have at least 15 years of education — usually high school plus technical college.

Seeking a young work force, the company decided that no more than 1 percent of the workers could have had any prior work experience. Despite the limitation, 55,000 young people met its criteria for interviews.

“In the villages there is little income,” said Siddu Matheapattu, 24, in between applying sealant to refrigerator frames. “Here I can earn more.”

By contrast, cities in the export-oriented Guangdong Province in southeastern China raised monthly minimum wages this summer by 18 percent, to $70 to $100 a month, after factories reported that they had one million more jobs than workers to fill them. Factories elsewhere in China face less severe labor shortages, but they also are being forced to raise wages.

As India has deregulated its economy, output has gradually accelerated to a growth rate of 8 percent a year, feeding a national euphoria and a few hopes of someday even beating China’s annual growth of more than 10 percent.

Plenty of obstacles remain, however, notably India’s weak infrastructure. China invests $7 on roads, ports, electricity and other backbones of a modern economy for every dollar spent by India — and it shows. Ports here are struggling to handle rising exports, blackouts are frequent and dirt roads are common even in Bangalore, the center of the country’s sophisticated computer programming industry.

Pervasive corruption has slowed many efforts to fix these problems. India’s labor laws, little changed since they were enacted just after independence in 1947, also continue to discourage companies from hiring workers, by making it very difficult to lay off employees even if a company’s fortunes sour or the economy slows.

Still, a new optimism prevails in India, bordering at times on euphoria.

“The Chinese are very good at copying things, but Indians believe in quality work, we believe in meeting pollution norms,” said S. S. Pathania, the assistant general manager of the Hero Honda motorcycle factory in Gurgaon, 30 miles south of New Delhi. “I think India will pass China very soon.”

An Unexpected Boom In Manufacturing

Sprawling across more than a square mile next to a gray tidal estuary, the scale of the Essar Group’s complex in Hazira is already impressive. Essar has its own port to bring in iron ore and its own large gas-fired power plant for electricity. At the steel mill, giant buckets pour 150 tons of molten metal at a time to form slabs 2 yards wide and up to 10 yards long.

But the complex is just starting to grow. Essar is quintupling steel production and pushing forward a sevenfold increase in power generation, most of it for sale to a national grid desperately short of electricity.

Growth on that scale, especially in industries like steel and power but also in areas like car parts and household appliances, is what India has long lacked. Industrial production accounts for only a fifth of India’s economic output, compared with two-fifths of China’s. But this ratio is starting to rise in India as manufacturing, led by exports, grows faster than agriculture and even some service industries.

Until recently, legislation effectively barred companies with more than 100 employees from competing in many industries. The laws were intended to protect tiny businesses in villages, often employing women and minorities; high tariffs were placed on imports as well.

But a result was hundreds of thousands of businesses too small to be competitive; India lags behind even the impoverished Bangladesh next door in exports of garments, a big creator of jobs for China. The Indian government has responded by narrowing the list of protected industries to 326 categories of goods from 20,000 and has lowered tariffs.

Comparing factories in India to their competitors in China, many of the Indian factories are smaller but some appear more efficient.

India’s stronger financial system demands higher interest rates than China’s state-owned banks, making it costlier to hold the small mountains of components awaiting assembly that are often seen in Chinese factories. The Confederation of Indian Industry, a national trade group, has also been highly successful in pushing companies to adopt the latest Japanese lean manufacturing techniques.

The drawback is that the nation’s manufacturing boom, built on higher-quality goods made under more modern conditions than in China, is not likely to create as many factory jobs as India needs.

The Essar steel mill, for example, has been replacing old, labor-intensive equipment with more modern gear. “We were having it all done manually, but because the customers demand very high quality, we have to do it automatically,” yelled Rajesh Pandita, an Essar manager, over the roar of a house-size machine that was stretching a minivan-size coil of steel back and forth through large rollers until it was little thicker than plastic kitchen wrap.

The Whirlpool factory in Pune uses machines, not people, to fold the steel exteriors of refrigerators. It has some of the highest productivity per worker of any Whirlpool factory in the world, with just 208 line workers producing up to 33,000 refrigerators a month.

Labor laws, however, discourage flexibility. They still ban companies from allowing manufacturing workers to put in more than 54 hours of overtime in a three-month period even if the workers want to earn extra money. Firing workers is extremely difficult.

“Companies think twice, 10 times before they hire new people,” said Sunil Kant Munjal, the chairman of the Hero Group, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of inexpensive motorcycles.

Hero in Gurgaon, on the southern outskirts of New Delhi, and its archrival, the Lifan Group in Chongqing, a city in western China, produce comparable motorcycles but the similarity ends there. Hero markets heavily to its domestic market, protected from foreign competition by high import tariffs, while Lifan emphasizes exports.

With scant ventilation, Lifan’s factories are filled with diesel exhaust as workers test engines and ride finished bikes at breakneck speed out the doors, zigzagging past co-workers. Hero’s factory in Gurgaon, where Honda holds a minority stake, has far better safety standards and excellent ventilation.

The Lifan factory pays less than $100 a month. The heavily unionized Hero factory pays $150 a month plus bonuses of up to $370 a month; nearly half the workers earn the top bonus, Mr. Pathania said.

Lifan’s labor force is quiescent — would-be organizers of independent labor unions face long jail terms or worse in China. Hero’s workers staged a successful nonviolent protest in 2005 to call for more contract workers to be eligible for the bonuses as well.

Bad Roads and Blackouts Take a Toll on Efficiency

But the biggest question mark hanging over the rise of manufacturing in India lies in whether the country has enough roads, ports and electricity-generating plants to move huge quantities of goods and power the factories that make them.

Captain Abhay Srivastava, an operations manager at India’s busiest port, was on duty on a recent afternoon when a phone call suddenly came in from the docks below. An enormous container ship from Qatar needed to slide 35 feet backward along the privately managed dock at the Nhava Sheva port near Mumbai to allow another large vessel to squeeze into the dock in front of it.

Captain Srivastava grabbed his white hard hat and dashed for the elevator. As soon as he reached the water’s edge, a dozen laborers in orange jumpsuits began straining to arrange a cat’s cradle of heavy, five-inch-thick ropes that would allow the ship to use its powerful winches to pull itself out of the way.

“They are efficient people; they don’t speak a lot,” said Captain Srivastava, who has visited most of the world’s major ports either as a ship captain or for port training exercises. “You go to some places and they just stand around.”

The efficiency of the Nhava Sheva port — it approaches West Coast ports in the United States in the number of containers moved per hour — shows that India is capable of producing world-class facilities.

But big as it is, Nhava Sheva is too small to handle the crush of traffic. John Deere tractors wait in a container at the dock for one to four days before being loaded on a ship.

“If this pace of growth continues, we will see more congestion at the port,” said Raj Kalathur, the managing director and chief executive of Deere’s operations in India.

Similar worries prevail in Chennai, formerly Madras. “Another four or five years, we’ll be choked,” said M. Rafeeque Ahmed, the chairman of the Farida Group, a 9,000-employee shoe manufacturer in Chennai that needs the port for exports.

Infrastructure improvements are particularly important because manufacturing companies are buying more and more components from far-flung suppliers. Making sure all those parts arrive on time requires a reliable transportation system.

“Manufacturing is no longer done all under one roof,” said Victor Fung, the chairman of the Li & Fung Group, a large Hong Kong-based company that buys goods from factories across Asia for sale to retailers and wholesalers in the United States and Europe.

Indian officials are talking about expansion. Planning is under way for new wharves at Nhava Sheva, but the years-long task of construction has not yet started.

China has faced capacity problems, too. A surge in steel production in early 2004 overwhelmed bulk cargo ports. Inflation quintupled in a year, to 5.3 percent, as bottlenecks at ports, highways, railroads and elsewhere in China drove up companies’ costs.

The Chinese response was swift and decisive. The pace of port investment nearly tripled in six months. Work crews labored around the clock to erect more cranes and expand wharves.

The Chinese economy grew at a breathtaking pace of 11.3 percent in the second quarter of 2006, but consumer prices were just 1 percent higher in July than a year earlier.

By contrast, India is struggling with 8 percent inflation this summer as bottlenecks have appeared after three years of 8 percent growth.

Belatedly, India’s roads and ports are improving. Just four years ago, Sona Koyo Steering Systems, an auto parts manufacturer, incurred hefty financing costs to keep a month’s inventory on hand in case deliveries were delayed. Now its factory in Gurgaon makes six deliveries a day to a nearby Maruti car assembly plant; the eight-mile drive takes an hour or more because of traffic jams, but the deliveries get through.

“I’m not going to deny infrastructure is bad,” said Surinder Kapur, Sona’s chairman and managing director. “But a lot of our vendors are around us, a lot of our customers are close to us.”

India is also starting to address chronic power shortages. But it is still a serious problem in northern India, where Mr. Kapur has his steering systems factory. He receives electricity from the national grid just seven or eight hours a day. So the factory has three enormous diesel generators, one bigger than a typical Manhattan living room, operating at four times what an industrial user in the United States usually pays.

Despite such obstacles, India’s manufacturing sector appears poised for further growth. In a country where the national symbol has shifted from government bureaucrats at aging desks to call center operators in cubicles, it looks as if the next icon will be the laptop-toting engineer on a factory floor.

“The old philosophy was, ‘I should work in an office, come in at 10 and leave at 4,’ ” said Nitin Kulkarni, 35, an engineer at the Hazira steel mill. But in recent years, he added, “there has been a revolution.”

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

The 5 secrets of making wealth

R A Krishna | August 23, 2006 | 09:34 IST

What does one do to become wealthy? Save a lot, spend less, invest well and in time you will become wealthy. Right? Well, yes, but. . . But what?

This is not a game. There is a secret to creating wealth that is far more than saving more, spending less and investing well. All these are external actions and involve, well, actions.

This is like saying that a building or an automobile or a ship will come up just by giving a few masons or blacksmiths or workers some tools and saying 'Go!' I am sure you would agree with me that these are nowhere near enough. So what is the missing piece in the puzzle? It is a concept.

First it's in the mind of one person and then it leads to actions to create the object in 'reality.' The aggregation of men and material occurs thus and the concept acquires a physical dimension.

This is not 'planning.' It is creation and this occurs in the right hemisphere of the brain. It is our connection to the universal life force, God, or whatever you may term it. It is the power and infinite intelligence that runs your body.

I have heard of people saying that the cosmos is just a random occurrence, that there is no infinite intelligence that operates the engine of the world. Try, however, to create a grain of rice with all the properties of a grain of rice and you will fall short even with the best tools in the best lab!

Okay, remember when you were last doing something creative? Did you feel energised? Did you feel excited? I am sure you did! Because life is creation and life is in creation. The best works come out when one does something without making any 'effort' whatsoever.

Thoughts flow easily and action becomes an extension of thought.

Okay, buddy, you are getting vague and philosophical. What does all this have to do with becoming rich? Just get to the point! The point here is that you become rich through creation rather than planning only.

Sure, but read on just a bit, till you come to my five-step formula for achieving health, wealth and happiness.

My previous articles have dealt with the process, but not the creation. So what is this creation? Thought is the beginning of manifestation in the physical realm. As mentioned in the first para, creation is not construction. It is not a random event. It is preceded by a desire or a dream.

From there the mind weaves its magic. It starts imagining how it can fulfil the dream. The next step is creation of a concept. There was a serial called Mungerilal Ke Haseen Sapnein which loosely translated means 'The Wishful Thinking of Mungerilal.' Mungerilal spun roseate dreams of riches and the good life that never ever came true.

So what separates Mungerilal from Dhirubhai Ambani? It is the steadfastness or holding on to the dream, being open to doing what it takes to make the dream come true and finally taking the right actions.

When Dhirubhai started as a small trader in Aden, did he imagine that he would be one of the greatest tycoons in the history of the world? Did he think that his empire would be as vast as it was at the time of his passing away? Did he dream that thousands of people would get jobs because of him? These questions can only be rhetorical as of now.

Do you get the drift? By starting the process of creation and believing in the power of your dreams, you will become far wealthier and satisfied in life than by just squirelling away a part of your income and allowing it to be grown by other people, however good they are at their job.

Does this seem to be a contradiction to what I wrote earlier? Maybe. But, imagine, one person was unable to comprehend the power of compounding of growth in income over a 25-year period.

For instance, is it possible for you to imagine that Rs 12 lakh (Rs 1.2 million) income per annum will be common place in India by about 2015! Or that if you get a growth of 10% in your income every year a person earning Rs 15,000 per month would be earning Rs 62,000 in 15 years. Do you believe that you would be getting a hike of only 10% every year? Young people expect more and get more these days or they switch jobs.

Here then is a very important concept. Your increase in income will be in direct proportion to your aspirational levels, your belief in yourself, your willingness to change and your openness to accepting that money could come from any source or sources which you may not even be aware of. Only through ethical means.

There are some unfavourable signals you give the Universe if you apply dishonest or harmful means. You will sabotage yourself!

I have experienced umpteens of instances when money came to me at the right time from sources totally unexpected, an old debt paid back, some payment I was not even aware of, and so on. May not have been huge money but just enough for the time.

I did not have to do anything except to be open to random occurrences. Rack your brains and you will recall instances when this has happened in your life. Can we make the process automatic rather than random? Sure.

Oh, but there is a 'but'! But make sure that your faith in the process does not waver. What did I say about an open mind! Also understand that the clock of the Universe operates on a different scale.

You can bring it to your scale by being more specific in wording your requests. So, does it mean that one makes a request to the Universe, sits back and waits for it to do its bit? Yeah sure, if you are willing to go according to its clock. Unfortunately, we have our urgent needs and also desires that do not wait. We also know how a wish can be fulfilled in a way that actually harms us. All this is starting to sound like mumbo jumbo. Let us get to specifics.

The process of creation in any field starts with a concept, a thought. This thought takes energy and becomes stronger. The energy increases to seeing the created entity as real in the creator's mind. A mental picture� is conceived in three dimensional 'virtual' reality. Finally it culminates in action to realise the dream in concrete or wood or metal or whatever.

Please note that action is the last step and action comes after a number of mental iterations occur. In effect you create your reality. Your ability to 'see' the picture and give it the energy to manifest, results in its realisation. For sure you may have to slog to achieve.

Even then, the picture in front of you will propel you to realise and manifest your dreams and the process will become pleasurable. This is just as an athlete pushes his body forward beyond its apparent capacity. At the time of running or jumping or swimming, the athlete's thoughts are focused on running the race, not the rewards, not the pain nor any other thought.

So also when you are pressed and pushed just stay focussed on the job at hand and it will seem to be effortless.

If you have felt the sheer exhilaration of doing something to the exclusion of all other thought, you will know what I mean. Okay, let us take a totally passive activity such as watching an interesting cricket or football match where the two teams are almost equally placed and the end of the game is near.

For one example, Sachin bowling the last over of the Hero Cup match against South Africa sometime in 1994 or so. Anyone who saw that match live will vouch for the fact that they had no thought other than the event unfolding on the TV. To take a more prosaic example, remember catching a train or a plane. You are sure that you will catch it come what may. How is this so?

Well, we always are sure of catching the train or plane. Were we to approach each of our goals thus, we would unfailingly achieve them. All our failures stem from the element of doubt that creeps in like a malignant shadow.

So here is my five step formula for achieving your health, wealth and happiness goals:

1. Start out with a clear idea of what you want, the clearer the idea the better your chances of achievement. Write it down clearly in a positive way and in the present tense. For example, if you want a car, clearly spell out what kind of car, what colour, what d�cor, and so on.

Let us say a Honda City in blue colour with beige faux leather interiors. Write down: 'I have a blue Honda City with beige faux leather interiors. It has a stereo system of the best quality from xyz, a television monitor, a DVD player, etc'

2. Picture yourself achieving your goal. If you are thinking of the car, picture yourself driving this car. See it in your driveway or parking lot. Give the picture a lot of colour and atmosphere such as smell (those who know will tell you that new cars smell different. For me it is an intoxicating smell), sound, etc. The better your visualisation, the faster you will get there.

3. Convince yourself of the definiteness of achieving your goal however absurd it appears initially. Dream big and see it as absolutely real. Conviction carries the day. Belief is all.

4. To assist you in your visualisation, prepare a scrapbook or a sheet of card paper and stick pictures of all the things you want in life. Only do not put people in it. For instance, you want a good partner, visualise your getting a good partner, the kind of person, his or her qualities and so on. Do not expect Marilyn Monroe to drop into your life, she is long since gone! If you are lucky and you desire it, someone who looks like her just might. . . so all the best!

5. Last of all there are two very important principles:

Be grateful for what you have and are getting everyday. Enjoy the sunrise and the sunset, the smell of flowers, the internet or whatever else you have, and say a silent thanks to all those who made this possible.

Do not badmouth the rich or famous or those with the traits that you seek to acquire. For instance if you want to be rich, revel in the riches of others. Let go of your programming that tells you that all rich people are greedy or evil or both. That they got there by cheating others. True or otherwise, stay away from these thoughts and from voicing them. (Anyway this is not true in the present world where honest persons like N R Narayana Murthy or Azim Premji or Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and many others have made it by the dint of their ideas and by acting on them.

Do not generalise. There are rich and dishonest people just as there are poor and dishonest people or dishonest middle class people.) Attract good experiences in your life by focussing on these rather than the bad ones. Believe in your power to attract good and desirable experiences through honest means and for your highest good. Use this caveat always, for my highest good.

I wish to mention that many of my dreams have come true in my life of five decades plus. Seven years back I never dreamt that I would ever be able to afford a new car. I drove a 1970 model Fiat. Since then I have had two new cars.

My income has increased so much that I say a silent prayer of thanks to Goddess Laxmi everyday. Sometimes when I feel down, I am able to see it as a passing blip.

All the best in your endeavours. May your fondest wishes come true. Also be careful what you wish for as it just might come true!

The author, who is based in Bangalore, is a former banker who is now a consultant for banking and finance. He can be contacted at rakrishna1952@gmail.com

Sunday, July 16, 2006

India’s Prime Minister Scolds Pakistan

Published: July 15, 2006

MUMBAI, India, July 14 — The Indian prime minister scolded Pakistan on Friday, saying its failure to rein in terrorism was threatening the peace process, his toughest remarks yet since the Mumbai train bombings and a marked shift in relations between the countries.

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Gurinder Osan/Associated Press

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, left, at King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, India, visiting bombing victims Friday.

“These terrorist modules are instigated, inspired and supported by elements across the border without which they cannot act with such devastating effect,” India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, said at a press briefing in Mumbai, which is India’s largest city and is also known as Bombay, three days after bombs tore through seven rush-hour trains, killing 181 people.

“I have explained it to the government of Pakistan at the highest level that if the acts of terrorism are not controlled, it is exceedingly difficult for any government to carry forward what may be called a normalization and peace process,” he added.

Indian authorities have not offered concrete evidence linking the bombings to any particular organization. But the local police and senior government officials have suggested involvement by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned Pakistan-based militant group active in the anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir, a territory both India and Pakistan claim.

The group is blamed for several attacks on Indian soil in recent years, though it has denied responsibility for them, including the bombings this week.

India and Pakistan have been engaged in peace talks for four years, since the end of a military standoff over a terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001, which was also attributed to Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Earlier this week, Pakistan rejected Indian finger-pointing over the Mumbai attacks. The Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, offered late Thursday to help in the investigation of the bombings, which also wounded 700.

Friday evening, Pakistan’s Foreign Office dismissed Mr. Singh’s allusion to a Pakistani link to the bombings. “In the past two days, India has not given us anything in writing or talked of any evidence,” said Tasnim Aslam, the Foreign Office spokeswoman, according to Pakistani state media. The next round of talks, between the foreign secretaries of both countries, is scheduled to begin next week.

Mr. Singh’s comments underscored the political pressures and opportunities that the bombings present to both governments.

On the one hand, Mr. Singh, who has been a stubborn proponent of engaging Pakistan, faces criticism from the opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, as well as from parts of the Indian public, for being too lenient on Pakistan and on the militant groups it is accused of harboring.

On Friday, an editorial in a Mumbai-based English daily, DNA, hectored the prime minister, urging him to bring more than consolation on his visit to the city. “Welcome, Prime Minister,” the headline read. “Now let’s have some action.”

The editorial concluded pointedly: “The time may have come to let terrorists and their backers know that India is a country with millennial patience, but angered and aroused, can play hardball. Will the prime minister oblige?”

At the same time, the Mumbai blasts present Mr. Singh’s government with a well of international sympathy to draw on, to exert pressure on its rival next door.

“I think in the wake of the Bombay bombings, especially if there is indeed some foreign link that emerges, Bombay will inevitably be seen as being a victim of Islamic terror as New York, Madrid or London,” said Sumit Ganguly, a professor of politics at Indiana University in Bloomington. “It cannot but help India’s cause in Kashmir.”

Across the fortified border, General Musharraf confronts domestic and international challenges of his own. From his supporters abroad, namely the United States, which has edged ever closer to New Delhi, he risks receiving added pressure to crack down on militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba.

But any such crackdown, observed Hasan-Askari Rizvi, a political analyst based in Lahore, Pakistan, would risk forfeiting the tepid support the general has from his country’s religious radicals, an important and volatile constituency.

The Mumbai bombings complicate his ability to sell peace with India as well. “The Islamists will argue that they knew that the dialogue would not work,” Mr. Rizvi said. “Others who favor the continuation of the dialogue will criticize him for letting the Islamic extremists undermine the dialogue.”

Talks between the countries have yielded bus and train links across divided Kashmir, increased the volume of tourist visas issued to citizens of each country, and prompted the release of prisoners. But they have not produced any concrete deal on Kashmir, the Himalayan territory over which the two countries have fought two wars.

Pakistan has grown increasingly frustrated by what it regards as Indian reticence on Kashmir. Frustration among the country’s religious radical allies and the military has increased pressure on General Musharraf. That pressure is particularly heavy as Pakistan approaches elections next year. General Musharraf is expected to run for re-election.

India denies stalling on the issue and accuses Pakistan of providing training, arms and sanctuary to guerrillas fighting Indian rule in Kashmir since 1989. Pakistan says it offers only political and moral support.

Since the peace talks began, violence has declined. But there has been a rise in attacks on Indian military forces and civilians in Kashmir in recent weeks. Among the most brazen was a grenade explosion that hit a tourist bus, killing 8 and injuring 40, both visitors and residents.

Despite the parallels of the Mumbai blasts to the London and Madrid bombings, there is widespread agreement in this country that the roots of India’s recent experience with terrorism are local, not global.

“They were intended to undermine the peace process, not only between India and Pakistan but between India and alienated Kashmiris,” said Radha Kumar, a historian who studies the Kashmir conflict, “and they were vile and despicable even in the vile and despicable history of terrorism in South Asia.”

Still, judging by the consolation and outrage that the Mumbai bombings have prompted worldwide, there is no question that they underscore India’s vulnerability. Whether that helps or hurts India in the long run is a matter of debate.

Whatever diplomatic benefits are accrued would have to be balanced with the new risks the country could face.

“At a superficial level it helps India’s position because the international community grows more aware of the dimension of the problem in Pakistan,” Ms. Kumar said. “At a deeper level, however, it hurts India’s position because it prevents India from making peace with alienated Kashmiri groups, and with Pakistan.”

Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, for this article, and Hari Kumar from New Delhi.