India's Nuclear Deal Has Growth at its Core

Bronwen Maddox: World Briefing

The storm over India’s new nuclear pact with the US, which now threatens to bring down the Indian Government, illustrates the only good thing about the deal – it is an antidote to anti-Western reflexes in the country that still run deep.

Other than that, the deal is a worry, for all the reasons that the US Congress has asserted: it is an extravagant breach of the spirit of non-proliferation treaties, showering the benefits of US nuclear help on India even though it acquired nuclear weapons.

But the row is a reminder that Indian stability and prosperity are surprisingly fragile, given the country’s remarkable growth. If the resolution manages to silence the intense nationalist voices, who put a fantasy of independence ahead of the pursuit of growth, then a bad deal will have had one good result.

Who would have thought, in a deal that gives India too much while asking for too few safeguards in return, that the greatest opposition would come from within India itself? Communist allies of the ruling coalition, led by the Congress Party, have threatened to withdraw their support over the civil nuclear cooperation deal with the US.

The Communists say that the deal hurts Indian sovereignty and could make it beholden to the US. But Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister, argues that the deal ends three decades of isolation for India, because of its acquisition of nuclear weapons, which prevented it gaining help for the nuclear power stations that it needs to support its growth. The trigger for this week’s uproar has been a comment from Ronen Sen, the Indian Ambassador to the US, in which he appeared to call communists in parliament “headless chickens”; he said later that they should not be offended as the remark referred only to journalists.

The row is important, not only because it jeopardises the deal (and it probably does not do so fatally). If it pulled down the Government, it would choke off reforms needed to maintain growth at the current rate of more than 7 per cent a year. Singh, widely described as one of the architects of India’s economic modernisation, is a champion of those reforms, intended to curb the budget deficit and spread access to good jobs beyond the English-speaking middle class.

Neither Congress nor communists want an election this year, but the turmoil may still force one before the Government’s term ends in May 2009. It was never a strong coalition, born out of the mutual desire to keep the Hindu-nationalist BJP out of power. But both would be foolish to campaign on the nuclear issue, which has not touched a national chord. It arouses none of the passions of parallel nuclear questions in Pakistan or Iran, for example.

It does in the US, however, where Congress, even before it fell under Democratic control, was quick to accuse the Bush Administration of striking a deal that subverted efforts to curb proliferation in order to cement an alliance. It is some small compensation that the deal strengthens the hand of Singh and other reformers, at the expense of those who would rather India stayed shut off from the world.

Without ‘foreign’ masters

The Plight Of Indian Comrades

By Amulya Ganguli

There may be a simple explanation for the Left’s ideological rigidity on the nuclear deal which is taking the country towards a mid-term poll. The comrades are not getting good advice about the pros and cons of their stance. In the past, they had the advantage of turning to their friends, philosophers and guides in Moscow or Beijing to show them the way out of any difficulty which was beyond their ken. For instance, when the yeh azadi jhooti hai movement centred mainly in Telengana began to fade out, the undivided Communist party dispatched four of its stalwarts ~ Ajoy Ghosh, SA Dange, Rajeshwara Rao and M Basavapunniah ~ to Moscow in 1950-51 to seek guidance.
There is a delightful passage in Mohit Sen’s autobiography, A Traveller and the Road: The Journey of an Indian Communist, which recounts how Stalin paced up and down smoking a pipe as the four Indians interacted with Suslov, Malenkov and Molotov. It was as if the principal of a school was silently watching how the teachers were instructing their students.

Stalin’s suggestion

When the principal finally gave his opinion, it was a sensible one: call off the armed struggle. Not only that, Stalin said that although India was still under British colonial influence (yeh azadi jhooti hai), the Jawaharlal Nehru government was not a puppet, for it had a social base and mass support. The Indian communists should concentrate, therefore, on fighting elections.
It is this kind of practical guidance which Prakash Karat and Co. are unable to secure today. There is no principal or teachers to show them the right path even it means abandoning an armed uprising, which the ‘students’ evidently thought was the only course before a revolutionary, and participating instead in the bourgeois exercise of holding elections, which carries the danger of developing “an outlook which evades militant forms of mass action”, as a CPI resolution warned in 1971.
Although the Soviet advice meant a deviation from the prescribed text, the Indian communists had little hesitation in accepting it because their dogma also prescribed unquestioning obedience to their ideological lord and master. But now, in the absence of such a centre of gravity, the Indian communists are not only adrift in their ideological sea, but also lack the intellectual calibre to break out of their dogmatic straitjacket or even modify a doctrine in accordance with the existing situation. The revolutionary text, therefore, is now set in stone for them and the comrades have no option but to abide by it even if such blind adherence leads them into stormy waters.
It is obvious, for instance, that if Karat and Co were to be transported back to the fifties and left to their own devices without the benefit of Moscow’s advice, they wouldn’t have had the intellectual daring to admit that their path of armed struggle in Telengana was wrong and that they must switch to parliamentary politics. They would have marched on blindly towards disaster. Not surprisingly, they are now following a course which can have portentous consequences for them and the party ~ and not all of them beneficial.
Before examining such a scenario, it may be worthwhile to examine another instance of perceptive of lords and masters abroad steering the Indian communists along the right channels. This was when Kanu Sanyal, Jangal Santhal, Sourin Bose and several other Naxalites ~ 12 in all ~ went to Beijing in 1967 to find out about the ways to conduct a revolution. Then, as noted by Sumanta Banerjee in his book, In the Wake of Naxalbari, Sourin Bose went to Beijing again in 1970 when the Naxalites in India found that Radio Peking was no longer extolling them and not even mentioning their “achievements” in Srikakulam.
What he was told, however, by Zhou Enlai and Kang Sheng must have been hugely disheartening, for the Chinese leaders asked the Naxalites to stop raising the slogan, “China’s chairman is our chairman”, since they said, to quote Banerjee, “to regard the leader of one country as the leader of another party is against the sentiment of the nation; it is difficult for the working class to accept it”. Moreover, Zhou and Kang Sheng were against the gunning down of individual policemen, which was one of the favourite tactics of the Naxalties. The two Chinese leaders said that “secret assassination of police is anarchist, is isolated from the masses, is short-lived”. As is obvious, all this was good advice, just as what Stalin told the Indian communists made eminent sense.
Evidently, Indian communists need close supervision. Otherwise, they are liable to commit major mistakes. Their history confirms this flaw in their character. Whether opposing the Quit India movement in 1942 when the anti-imperialist World War II became a people’s war following Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, or calling Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose a quisling and Rabindranath Tagore a bourgeois poet, the Left always seemed to be running against the national current.
But the Left’s biggest blunder was its curiously ambiguous response to the Chinese invasion in 1962. To quote Mohit Sen again, many in the CPI(M) “believed that the Chinese communists had done nothing wrong in attacking India. They thought that this was not an attack but a defensive action and that in the not so long run, the Chinese action would help the advance of the revolution by weakening the power of the ruling alliance, especially by pulling down the prestige of the Congress and its leader Pandit Nehru.”

The split

As is known, the undivided Communist party split within two years of the Chinese invasion as a result of the differences in the party on the issue. After the rupture, the CPI came to be known as a pro-Moscow organization and the CPI(M) as pro-Beijing, although the Marxists lost the label to the Naxalites five years later when the first of the many CPI(M-L)s were set up. However, the identification of the communists with foreign powers ~ either a friendly one like the Soviet Union or a hostile one like China ~ has remained a part of public consciousness.
Now, the Left’s attempt to scuttle the nuclear deal is likely to strengthen this unflattering impression because of the evident uneasiness in China and Pakistan about New Delhi’s growing ties with Washington. Such a perception will be all the more damaging to the communists because of the evident rise in Chinese bellicosity over Arunachal Pradesh. And Pakistan, of course, has long been a bugbear despite the recent marginal improvement in mutual relations.
Arguably, the current misgivings about the Left can be no less damaging than what happened in 1942 and 1962. Perhaps even more so because unlike in the earlier periods, India is seemingly poised today to become a major economic and political power. If the communists are seen, therefore, to be setting up roadblocks and that, too, at the behest of foreign powers, their electoral prospects cannot but be dim.

The writer is a former Assistant Editor, The Statesman

Editorial

Immigration Malpractice

Published: July 7, 2007, nytimes.com

The prickliness and glacial ineptitude of the immigration system is old news to millions of would-be Americans. Immigrants who play by the rules know that the rules are stringent, arbitrary, expensive and very time-consuming. But even the most seasoned citizens-in-waiting were stunned by the nasty bait-and-switch the federal bureaucracy pulled on them this month. After encouraging thousands of highly skilled workers to apply for green cards, the government snatched the opportunity away.

The tease came in a bulletin issued by the State Department in June announcing that green cards for a wide range of skilled workers would be available to those who filed by July 2. That prompted untold numbers of doctors, medical technicians and other professionals, many of whom have lived here with their families for years, to assemble little mountains of paper. They got certified records and sponsorship documents, paid for medical exams and lawyers and sent their applications in. Many canceled vacations to be in the United States when their applications arrived, as the law requires.

Then they learned that the hope was effectively a hoax. The State Department had issued the bulletin to prod Citizenship and Immigration Services, the bureaucracy that handles immigration applications, to get cracking on processing them. The agency is notorious for fainting over paperwork — 182,694 green cards have been squandered since 2000 because it did not process them in time. That bureaucratic travesty is a tragedy, since the annual supply of green cards is capped by law, and the demand chronically outstrips supply. The State Department said it put out the bulletin to ensure that every available green card would be used this time.

After working through the weekend, the citizenship agency processed tens of thousands of applications. On Monday, the State Department announced that all 140,000 employment-based green cards had been used and no applications would be accepted.

Citizenship and Immigration Services, the definition of a hangdog bureaucracy, says the law forbids it to accept the applications. The American Immigration Lawyers Association says this interpretation is rubbish. It is preparing a class-action lawsuit to compel the bureaucracy to accept the application wave that it provoked.

The good news is that immigrants’ hope is pretty much unquenchable. Think of the hundreds of people standing in the rain in ponchos at Walt Disney World on Independence Day, joining the flood of new citizens now cresting across the country. They celebrated on July Fourth, but for many of them the magic date is July 30, when a new fee schedule for immigrants takes effect, drastically jacking up the cost of the American dream.

The collapse of immigration reform in the Senate showed the world what America thinks of illegal immigrants — it wants them all to go away. But the federal government, through bureaucratic malpractice, is sending the same message to millions of legal immigrants, too.

Caste Aside

By ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN

Only in India are people clamoring to be called socially inferior. Last week, over 20 people died in protests in the state of Rajasthan when a group called the Gujjars demanded to be legally downgraded so they could benefit from job guarantees and handouts that flow from "reservation," India's form of "affirmative action" for its lower castes. Last month, citizens in Uttar Pradesh, the country's largest state, went to the polls and delivered an overwhelming mandate to a party committed to expanding reservations for the Dalits -- the caste formerly known as the "untouchables." Both events bring into sharp focus a larger question: Is it guarantees or opportunities that offer the best way out of social and economic backwardness?

Historically, the government's answer to this question was clear, if somewhat schizophrenic: Elites were given opportunities, while the poorer classes were given guarantees. The Constitution itself envisaged free universal and compulsory education for children up to 14 years. But in practice, policy makers since the 1950s emphasized higher education, which largely benefited urban elites who had excellent primary and secondary education. The relative neglect of basic education for the masses, meanwhile, deprived historically disadvantaged classes of similar opportunities for upward mobility. Instead, they were given guaranteed seats in colleges and public sector jobs. While these did have some benefits, by definition, only a small fraction benefited from the guarantees. This temporary, targeted fix, however, came to be regarded as a permanent solution. Guarantees have now become, insidiously, a substitute for creating opportunities.

Unlike the United States, where affirmative action came many decades after the nation's creation, reservation was an integral part of India's founding. And unlike in America, it is a large and blunt instrument of social engineering, taking the form of quotas. Thus, India's founding fathers mandated that 22.5% of all public sector employment and enrollment in government-financed higher education institutions should be reserved for "lower" groups called the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes (SC/STs).

Instead of shrinking with time, these quotas have vastly increased. Today, at least 50% of all public sector jobs and educational seats are reserved for SC/STs, along with another category called "Other Backward Classes," who were traditionally also discriminated against but occupied a slightly higher rung than the SC/STs in the old Indian caste hierarchy. In some states, like Tamil Nadu, the quota can approach 80%.

In politics, reservation used to be a dividing axis pitting the Congress Party, which broadly supported reservations, against its main national rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which historically opposed the policy. Over the last few years, however, in a remarkable shift, reservation has become a bipartisan issue, with politicians of all stripes embracing it as an imperative of electoral success. In this environment, reservation's reach is being extended to elite educational bastions of merit such as the Indian Institutes of Management -- which populates India's most visible companies, such as Infosys and Wipro, as well as many prominent multinational firms. More strikingly, for the first time, there is talk of extending it to private sector employment, an objective that was articulated in the electoral manifesto of the current government.

Is India fated to affirmative action in perpetuity? Interestingly, the public and private realms are moving in opposite directions: While federal and state political actors are reinforcing guarantees over opportunities, consumer choices are clearly reflecting a preference for the latter. The trigger has been provided by the turnaround in India's economic growth, which is now running around 9% annually.

Economic growth has increased the returns to education dramatically enough to set off a mad scramble to acquire education. Even the poorest rural households have internalized the imperative of acquiring education to survive in the new knowledge-based economy. But getting this education is, unfortunately, not always easy. In rural India, free public education is supposedly universally available but it is largely dysfunctional -- teachers often don't turn up to class, and when they do, they impart little of value to students. In a surprising new trend, even the poorest are willing to forego such free public education for costly but (slightly) better private education.

Yet it is a bitter choice when they must forego necessities to access a right accorded to them in the nation's constitution. India is therefore ripe for a voucher system that would combine public financing with the private provision of basic education. Such a scheme could be tailored to individual state needs: One possible twist could be to graduate the value of the voucher, increasing it for the backward classes. The benefits of this would be twofold: It would appease the populist clamor for equal opportunities and it might even be necessary to overcome any discrimination by private providers against enrolling children from backward castes.

Unlike many economic policies that involve trade-offs between equity and efficiency, vouchers can satisfy both objectives. Voucher programs, especially in their graduated variant, are particularly beneficial for the poor. And, by improving incentives and spreading opportunities, a voucher scheme would simply accelerate an ongoing market-driven trend toward the spread of basic education, helping to ease the supply constraints of the Indian educational system and adding to the pool of labor that is at the heart of the country's growth turnaround.

Voucher schemes could also be politically appealing. Studies show that bad policy choices often stem from an attribution problem: Voters can more easily credit politicians for targeted favors such as reservations than for diffuse benefits, such as better economic policies. Ironically, with vouchers, like for other handouts, identifying the benefactor would be easy. The first voucher scheme, instituted in New Delhi for the academic year 2007-08, attracted 100,000 applicants for 400 vouchers.

A general concern with voucher schemes -- their potentially negative impact on public education, as students flock to better, often private, competitors -- would be less relevant than usual in India because public education, particularly in the poorest states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, is considered very difficult, if not impossible, to repair. That makes private provision a viable, even unavoidable, long-term alternative. For this reason, public teachers, with their close links with local politicians, will oppose vouchers, but the large and widespread benefits could help overcome this opposition.

Reservation may have been necessary to redress India's historical inequities. But even its intended beneficiaries -- the poorest -- are becoming wise to its limitations. Voucher-based education cannot take reservation out of the popular political debate but, over time, it can be made less important, as the real opportunities created by better education reduce the illusory appeal of guarantees. A sign of that successful transition would be street protests aimed not at rejigging social classifications, but demanding that teachers actually show up in the classroom.

Mr. Subramanian is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C.

Delhi Metro helped save 33,000 tonnes of fuel

New Delhi, June 04: The Delhi Metro helped save 33,000 tonnes of fuel and prevented the creation of over 2,275 tonnes of poisonous gases in the national capital, a new report has said. The completion of Phase I of Delhi Metro, covering 65 km, resulted in a reduction in road accidents, helped improve road traffic and travel conditions and made a substantial impact on the environmental well-being of the capital, the report by the Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) said. "As a result of less use of road vehicles with the coming of the metro, 57,858 tonnes of petrol, diesel and CNG would be saved by the end of year 2007. Over 33,000 tonnes of this have already been saved between 2002 and 2006," it said. "Since the metro began operations in December 2002, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has already taken 22,697 vehicles load onto its system which is likely to increase to about 40,000 by the end of year 2007." As a result, 16.6 lakh vehicle kilometres would be saved and Rs 218 cr would be saved on maintenance of vehicles by the end of 2007, apart from fuel savings of Rs 172 cr, it said. The report, commissioned by DMRC as part of the first ever study of the impact of its operations, also stated that "Delhites would have a saving of Rs 129 cr by the end of 2007 owing to the Metro". Apart from monetary and environmental benefits, the report suggests the metro has made a substantial improvement in travel conditions and earning capacity per person in the capital. "A person saves around 66 minutes every day by traveling in the Metro, which translates to the additional earning capacity of Rs 725 cr by 2007-end," it said. In addition, passengers traveling on the Delhi Metro save on human energy consumed due to the smooth and comfortable journey, and this has resulted in saving of 40.19 tera joules of energy by 2007. In terms of the human lives saved in road accidents, the report said, "Delhi Metro has helped in already saving 280 lives upto 2006 which would have lost if they had travelled on other modes of transport." The report also concluded that the metro would lead to total savings of around Rs 2,072 cr for the people of Delhi by the end of 2007. "These benefits are a result of passenger time saved, fuel cost saved, reduction in capital and operating cost of vehicles, reduction in environmental damage, accidents and time saved etc," DMRC spokesperson Anuj Dayal told agencies. "In fact, in terms of the total saving for Delhites, the CRRI report says that the total capital investment on phase i of Delhi Metro will be recovered by 2013," he added.

A little India, here in Raleigh
Students carve out a cultural niche

Josh Shaffer, Staff Writer

RALEIGH - Last fall, Kunal Shah flew 8,000 miles from Mumbai to Raleigh with his life in a suitcase, his heart still in India and his mind on an American master's degree.

(photo: Shrikrishna Khare, left, Neil D'Souza and Rishi Mehta walk home from class along Avent Ferry Road, an Indian enclave. )

Today, he walks out of his Southwest Raleigh apartment and feels his homesickness fade. Cricket matches spring up in parking lots and tennis courts. Cars pass by with pictures of Hindu gods dangling from the rearview mirrors. If he needs curry or roti bread, some neighbor will drive him to the Indian market in Cary -- six miles away.

Shah has melded into a growing cultural niche on Avent Ferry Road, a place where Indian graduate students at N.C. State University fill entire apartment complexes.

Indian students know about Avent Ferry even before they leave India, and they rank apartment complexes in order of preference: Champion Court, Avery Close, Colonial Arms.

Students here represent a migration of budding engineers seeking fruitful jobs at home in India, where high-tech jobs are blooming, but the master's degrees they require are scarce and competitive. They list as a top choice N.C. State University, one of a handful of American schools that offer graduate degrees in computer networking.

Shah and his peers also add flavor in North Carolina's Capital City, where more and more residents hail from somewhere else.

"People tend to joke it's 'Indian Ferry Road,' " said Shah, 22. "You are still in that mood. It's not as difficult coming to the U.S."

N.C. State lists roughly 2,000 people here on student visas, about 450 from India -- more than from any other country. Nationwide, Indian students add up to more than 75,000 -- again, the largest influx coming from any country. Next year, Shah expects perhaps another 300 students to arrive in Raleigh.

They cluster as close as possible to the engineering classes on Centennial Campus, sharing rides to Cary for Bollywood movies at Galaxy Cinema or Triangle Indian Market, which caters to their vegetarian diets.

"In the engineering classes, I think many Americans will tell you they feel out of place," said Ajit Gopalakrishnan, 23, who is studying electrical engineering.

On Avent Ferry, Shah points out low-slung brick complexes occupied almost entirely by Indians. Most show up for multiyear stays without a car, a credit card, a cell phone or much money. Furniture comes from garbage bins or garage sales.

Most require jobs to help them through school. Shah worked at Taco Bell despite being a strict religious vegetarian. "I had to touch meat," he said.

Raleigh's Indian pocket is discreet enough to escape most notice -- no saris hanging in the window, incense burning or curry scent wafting down the street. In Shah's apartment recently, the only activity amounted to four students crowded on living room couches, noses in their laptops, tennis shoes piled by the door.

N.C. State, abroad

Last month, N.C. State Chancellor James Oblinger took a weeklong trip to India to promote international education. He traveled with President Bush's ally, Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes, and several other university heads. Before he left, Shah assured him the United States was still a destination for Indians post-9/11.

"I had a young lady come up to me and say, 'I'm so excited to meet you. I'll be on your campus next year studying electrical engineering.' " Oblinger told N.C. State's board of trustees on Friday. "I was the only one that had that happen."

Tech jobs are exploding in India. Cisco Systems will build a second headquarters in Bangalore, spending $150 million and hiring 1,000 people. IBM plans to double its Indian work force by 2010, counting on skilled but lower-cost labor. Indians here plan to spend a few years working for American companies -- Shah has an internship in San Jose this summer -- then return to India for promising work.

Back in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Shah followed an online community on Yahoo.com that offers advice to N.C. State's incoming Indian students. Dozens check in each day. Skip clothes hangers, which are cheap, they learn. Bring garam masala and other spices, which are expensive and hard to find.

All Shah and his peers knew on arrival was that someone from Maitri -- the campus's Indian support group -- would be waiting at the airport.

Maitri met Shah's group with three cars and a van, arranged squatter's housing with other seniors and pointed them in the direction of housing and jobs.

The call of higher ed

Hardik Thakker, 23, never imagined coming to America. He grew up in Mumbai in a household with 12 others including extended family, and he never got the urge to leave until he watched his Indian classmates migrate to American colleges seeking a professional edge.

At N.C. State, he felt horribly lost.

Avent Ferry Road offers a Food Lion, a Mediterranean grocery, an Ethiopian restaurant, a pool room and a few banks. Two-story brick apartments line the west side, and the sight of an Indian face is common.

But little is walkable, leaving a newcomer to navigate the Wolfline bus system.

Thakker and Shah found an apartment at Kensington Park --fourth on their list of preferences because Centennial Campus is a Wolfline ride away rather than a few minutes' walk.

Thakker spent months knocking on doors in search of work, reminding himself to be patient and persistent. Finally, in October, he found a job.

"I issue tickets for parking violations," he said with a smile. "People come and abuse me when they see me writing tickets."

Soon, Shah and Thakker joined Maitri, which offers a chance to share Indian food and company. The Food Lion suffices for milk and other staples.

Thakker has started a blog. In a recent entry, he wrote about earning his driver's license after two failed tries and a botched U-turn:

"It might seem pretty easy to get a license, but for me, it was no less than a war."

No cultural vacuum

Still, "Indian" Ferry Road is not an isolated Indian island, said Jay Narayan, an N.C. State distinguished professor in material science engineering and a Maitri adviser.

"They integrate quite well," Narayan said. "The English language is not a problem. They speak well. They write well. It's just that they like to live together, especially when they come in. It's not a ghetto."

N.C. State works to integrate students into the community, and Indian students often visit Wake County schools to give cultural lectures, said Michael Bustle, director of N.C. State's Office of International Services.

Still, he added, "If you went to India and there were a few Americans who lived there, you'd most likely live with them because they know what a Big Mac tastes like and who the sports teams are."

Shah and Thakker celebrated Lord Krishna's birthday in Raleigh last year -- a festival they tended to skip back home.

Tradition and change

Now Shah and Thakker share an apartment with three other students in Champion Court, their first preference just outside Centennial Campus.

The cricket club meets near Carmichael gym each Friday when the weather gets warm.

Shah and Thakker organized a screening of the Cricket World Cup games -- the Indian equivalent of the Super Bowl -- on campus. But time to relax is scarce.

American classes are more rigorous than those in India, Shah said. Class is awkward for Indian students, too, because N.C. State professors are so much more approachable and friendly. They are used to formality on campus back home.

But they adjust. On a warm Saturday, Shah and Thakker sit at Cup A Joe on Avent Ferry, both wearing Wolfpack shirts.

Shah was elected president of Maitri in February. Thakker took vice president. They call their apartment "Maitri Headquarters."

"It feels like giving back what you have got," Shah said.

"We feel honored," Thakker echoed.

In July, they will organize a caravan to the airport, shuttling hundreds of newcomers to their temporary digs -- confident after a year's experience on Indian Ferry Road.

Staff writer Josh Shaffer can be reached at 829-4818 or josh.shaffer@newsobserver.com.

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.

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

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.

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
[ 23 Nov, 2006 0125hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

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.

Substance in Red Wine Extends Life of Mice

By NICHOLAS WADE

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.

Across Europe, Worries on Islam Spread to Center

By DAN BILEFSKY and IAN FISHER

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.

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."

September 4, 2006

Op-Ed Contributor

The Summer Next Time

By TOM LUTZ

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.”

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

By KEITH BRADSHER

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.”