Didn’t
own a blazer in school, Raghuram Rajan tells students
Recalling
his days as a student whose parents couldn’t afford a blazer for him, RBI
Governor Raghuram Rajan on Thursday asked children at his alma mater to make
the most of the opportunities offered by economic liberalisation.
Touched by the rousing reception by students, parents and
teachers at Delhi Public School R. K. Puram, he said it took quite an effort
for his parents to have him admitted to the school in 1974. Mr. Rajan said he
left the school as a better person.
There
was a time, he said, when he did not have a blazer and used to go to school
wearing only a sweater in the winter.
“I
have to say I did not own one [blazer] in school then, I made through high
school with a sweater, partly because at that time my parents could not afford
a blazer,” said Mr. Rajan, observing how things have changed for the better in
the past few decades.
Mr.
Rajan said that when he grew up, there were fewer opportunities as everybody
wanted to join engineering schools or medical colleges.
“Today
you have so many opportunities. You have lots of opportunities in the media...
You could become a chef, you could become a professor, a central banker and so
many opportunities you have today,” he said.
“So
I am not saying things would be easier for you, a lot more choice but it will
also be challenging. The reason is that today there is far more competition
from globalisation and technology than there used to be in our time,” he added.
RBI
Governor allays currency note fears
Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan on Thursday
sought to quell fears over the decision to withdraw all pre-2005 currency notes
from April 1, 2014, saying the RBI notification was not aimed at
demonetisation. Assuring the people that such currency notes would continue to
be legal tender, Dr. Rajan said there was no cause for panic. The public would
be required to approach banks for exchanging their pre-2005 notes. The RBI on
Wednesday said that after March 31 it would withdraw from circulation all
currency notes issued prior to 2005. This is not an attempt to demonetise such
currency notes. It is only that the pre-2005 currency notes can be easily
forged, while the new currency notes being printed now have more security
features.
Nagaland:
descent into chaos
The reckless ‘ceasefire’ between the Government of India
and the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN-IM), a militia
predominantly of the Tangkhul tribe of Manipur, for the last 17 years is
pushing the Nagas into a state of civil war. While the protagonists of the
‘ceasefire,’ New Delhi and the NSCN (I-M), are in mutual comfort capering about
the mulberry bush without a stopwatch, the process has landed the Nagas in an
orbit of self-destruction. They are far more fragmented and fractious than
before.
The Naga society is seething
with multiple tensions intermittently erupting into morbid fratricidal
violence. The wars in Zunheboto between the local Sema Nagas and the NSCN (I-M)
that left several dead and scores injured on both sides, the discovery of mass
graves in and around Dimapur, and the closing of ranks by six tribes of eastern
Nagaland — Chang, Konyak, Phom, Khaimniungan, Yimchunger and Sangtan — for a
protracted fight for political and administrative separation from other tribes
of Nagaland are some of the latest grim portents of their fraught predicament.
Over
1,800 Nagas have been killed in some 3,000 fratricidal clashes since the
beginning of the ‘ceasefire’ (1997-2013). Contrast it with the violence during
the 17 years preceding the ‘ceasefire’ (1980-96) that took a toll of some 940
Naga lives in 1,125 clashes mostly with the security forces. The irony is
underscored by the fact that while the security forces and the NSCN (I-M) have
been at mutual ‘peace’ during the ‘ceasefire,’ twice as many Nagas have died, killing
one another in some 300 per cent escalation in fratricidal violence. The vector
of violence has turned inward with a vengeance, from between the security
forces and the Naga militias to the one among the Nagas themselves. Some in New
Delhi gleefully chuckle at their remarkable feat of trapping the ‘belligerent’
Nagas in this vicious cycle of fratricidal killings.
The
term ‘Naga’ is a rubric for a host of over 25 distinct tribes inhabiting the
Nagaland State and adjoining areas of north-eastern India and Myanmar. Their
mutual differences far outnumber their commonness. Each tribe is culturally
distinct and linguistically unintelligible to the others. In the not so distant
past, contacts between two tribes were, more often than not, marred by
bloodshed. Modern state, modern education and the Gospel have had a somewhat
sobering influence on their world view.
The
Naga National Council, the first credible political entity of the Nagas with
pan-Naga political ambitions, born just before the British left India, sought
to engender a shared political consciousness among the disparate tribes. Under
the stewardship of A.Z. Phizo, an Angami Naga, it launched an armed campaign to
secede the Nagas from India. The NNC’s campaign for secession and the
counter-campaign of the Indian state were much too violent.
The
NNC’s enterprise to forge a politically conscious and socially united Naga
society was largely anchored in its projection of a common enemy — post-British
India. It challenged the Indian state with the gun. The conflict was grossly
asymmetric. The Indian state had far superior guns in far superior numbers. A
gun-inspired political enterprise to forge a collective political identity on a
disparate sociological base merely on the fiction of a common enemy was fraught
and foredoomed.
The
Nagaland State created in December 1963 with enhanced autonomy on matters,
including the customary laws of the tribes, administration of civil and
criminal justice and ownership and transfer of land and its resources, offered
unprecedented democratic space to the Nagas of Nagaland to fulfil their
aspirations and allay their apprehensions. The Nagaland State as a democratic
polity took the wind out of the NNC’s sails and unleashed forces and interests
that were incompatible with and antithetical to the kind of politics being
prosecuted by the militant Nagas. The NNC got splintered and eventually faded
into political irrelevance although, thanks to the failure of the Nagaland
State to deliver on its promises, its motto still tugs at the Nagas’ hearts and
minds.
The
dynamic of democratic politics within the special framework, howsoever
imperfect in the eyes of the Nagas, guaranteed by the Constitution of India,
created imperatives for peaceful co-existence and co-mingling of the Naga tribes.
Several ultra radical Naga nationalists joined the new constitutional order and
helped in weakening the centrifugal politics of their erstwhile colleagues.
Although the weakened ultra radical strain did not die and sporadically
asserted itself with a vengeance marked by mayhem and bloodshed, it
increasingly ceased to be the mainstream politics.
By
the 1980s, ultra-radical nationalists were pushed to the margins of the Naga
political space. Their capability to influence Naga politics was grossly eroded.
Violence — 105 killed in 10 years (1981-90) — was the lowest in Nagaland’s
history. The Naga issue began inching towards a sort of Chekhovian resolution.
Unlike a Shakespearean tragedy where, at the end, the stage is splashed with
blood and strewn with corpses, a tragedy by Anton Chekhov ends with the
characters unhappy, disillusioned, even bitter but alive, bracing themselves
for a new beginning.
The
process of a slow yet steady political reconciliation and social assimilation
of the Nagas got perverted with New Delhi’s cynical engagement with the NSCN
(I-M) since August 1, 1997. The ‘ceasefire’ with the outfit was in utter
disregard for the logic of the prevailing situation. The crucial stakeholders —
the popularly elected State government, the traditional Naga bodies that wield
wide and deep influence on their respective tribes and other active militias in
the fray — were excluded from the process. New Delhi missed the vital fact that
the NSCN (I-M), notwithstanding its pan-Naga pretensions, is essentially a
militia of the Tangkhul tribe of Manipur with little resonance with the broad
Naga family. A deal cut with it would not be acceptable to the Naga society.
Not
only the deal itself was a nostrum ab
initio , New Delhi’s
emasculation of the institutions of the state such as stripping the police of
their statutory obligations to enforce the laws and maintain the public order
against unlawful activities of the NSCN (I-M) further worsened the situation.
The NSCN (I-M) has been unrestrained in demonstrative use of brutal force.
Dressed in battle fatigues and armed with sophisticated combat weapons, its
cadres freely roam the streets of towns and villages. In the teeth of popular
opposition, New Delhi allowed it to set up multiple garrisons, almost in every
district to help expand its reach in the State. In the guise of giving the NSCN
(I-M) a secure political space for building a workable consensus on the
fractious Naga issues, New Delhi has given the militia a free military run of
the Naga inhabited areas.
The NSCN (I-M) leadership has, however, failed to grasp
the fragility of the fiction of a Naga nation imagined on the base of an
ethnically fragmented society riddled with historical contradictions. Instead
of building a workable resonance with the Naga society, it used the
‘ceasefire,’ under the tacit patronage of New Delhi, to augment its weapons
inventories, its promiscuous killing-machine to terrorise people into
submission and establish its military hegemony over all tribes.
However,
true to their martial character, the Naga tribes have refused to be subdued and
they often strike back with a vengeance. The violent clashes in Zunheboto
during the last Christmas week — in which some 10,000 Sema Nagas from over 100
villages armed with traditional weapons attacked a local NSCN (I-M) garrison in
a fight that lasted three days and claimed over a dozen lives — are a pointer
to the popular resistance to the outfit. The Semas, who were resentful of the
NSCN (I-M)’s garrison in their land, were provoked by molestation of their
women by the armed cadres of the outfit some days earlier. They dismantled the
garrison and chased away, at least temporarily, the armed NSCN (I-M) cadres.
The
‘ceasefire’ with the NSCN (I-M) has resulted in the retreat of the state from the
crucial areas of governance and subversion of democratic politics. It is
undoing the political and social gains achieved since the creation of the
Nagaland State that has been rendered tentative in its aftermath. The absence
of a credible state has created a power vacuum that is being filled in by
chaotic sub-nationalist forces often at war with one another. The powerful
traditional tribal bodies are alienated and, in their eagerness to flout New
Delhi’s dalliance with the NSCN (I-M), are fostering the other Naga militias.
The secessionist politics that was profoundly circumscribed by the politics of
expanded democracy is seeking to regain centre stage.
Thanks
to New Delhi’s cavalier policies, the Nagas are in a dystopia and the grapes of
wrath against India are ripening for the vintage.
LPG
portability launched
Petroleum
and Natural Gas Minister M. Veerappa Moily on Wednesday announced the launch of
portability of LPG connection scheme across 480 districts of the country and
covering all the oil marketing companies (OMCs) and which have multiple LPG
distributors of various ratings.
With
the launch of this new initiative, consumers can now switch to the distributor
of his choice within a cluster of LPG distributors in the vicinity. This
measure will bring great relief to those LPG consumers who are unhappy with the
services of their current distributor or want to move to an LPG distributor
closer to their place of residence.
As
a pilot project, the OMCs together launched the portability scheme in 24
districts covering 13 States in October last year. Mr. Moily said the scheme
was being extended on an all-India basis by expanding its coverage to over 480
districts and a population of over 8.2 crore LPG consumers.
In
order to facilitate LPG consumers to benefit from the scheme, the OMCs have
made more than 1,400 clusters of distributors in over 480 districts with an
average of almost 4 distributors per cluster to choose from.
The
details of these clusters are available on the OMC websites. It has also been
ensured that the portability scheme now covers all possible markets that are
having distributors of multiple companies coupled with the scope for formation
of clusters.
To
register for portability, LPG consumers need to visit the website of the three
OMCs — the Indian Oil Corporation, the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited
and the Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited — and register themselves. The
consumers can then see the distributors in the cluster and their star rating in
terms of refill delivery performance and select the distributor of their choice
and submit request. Subsequently, the consumer will receive an email confirming
the registration and advising details of further procedure.
In
case of inter-company transfer, i.e. between two different OMCs, since the LPG
equipment is not compatible across companies, the consumer will have to visit
the current distributor and surrender the cylinder and pressure regulator,
collect the refund/transfer documents and then approach the distributor of
his/her choice for reconnection by paying the same deposit as earlier. No
transfer fee or additional security deposit will be charged for transfer of
connection.
Chidambaram
to present vote-on-account on February 17
Finance
Minister P. Chidambaram will present the vote-on-account (general) for 2014-15
on February 17 in the Lok Sabha when parliament reconvenes from Feb.5 to 21 for
the extended winter session.
Informed
sources said the parliament’s nod for vote-on-account is necessary for running
the administration for the next few months in the next financial year (2014-15)
till the new government presents a full-fledged budget in the 16{+t}{+h}Lok
Sabha after the ensuing LS poll.
Similarly,
Railway Minister Mallikarjun Kharge will present an interim railway budget for
2014-15 on February 12, they said.
Latvia’s first woman PM wins confidence vote
Latvia’s
parliament on Wednesday gave the green light to a new centre-right coalition
government led by its first ever woman Prime Minister.
Laimdota
Straujuma (62), won the parliamentary vote after Valdis Dombrovskis stepped
down over a supermarket roof collapse that killed dozens in the capital Riga in
November.
Microfinance institutions lending close to
Rs.30,000 cr in current fiscal
Microfinance
institutions (MFIs) have extended loans to the tune of Rs.30,000 crore so far
in the current fiscal.. Growth is expected to increase by 40 per cent next
fiscal, Microfinance Institutions Network (MFIN) CEO Alok Prasad said here.“The
portfolio of lending has gone up by 55 per cent this year. The good news is
that payback tendency of over 99 per cent of the borrowers is strong. It is an
encouraging scenario,” Mr. Prasad said. He, however, added that there was no
change in ground situation in Andhra Pradesh, which has zero business for MFIs.
The
2010 MFI regulation by the Andhra Pradesh Government had a significant impact
on microfinance companies in the State. These companies could not continue
operations since then, and the total outstanding loans stood at Rs.7,000 crore.
The
MFIs are pinning their hopes on the proposed Microfinance Bill. “The companies
abide by the State law until a single regulation is established post-MFI Act.
Till then, the MFIs cannot re-start the operations in Andhra Pradesh,” he said.
The industry umbrella body is not hopeful of passing of
the proposed Microfinance Bill in the current session of Parliament. “The Bill
has undergone scrutiny by the RBI, industry and Parliament. But given the
paucity of time, it may not be taken up in the current session,” Mr. Prasad
said. Going by the RBI mandate on self regulatory organisations engaged in
microfinance, the MFIN is mulling changes in its bylaws. The industry body in
its extraordinary general meeting on Tuesday here is expected to discuss
key issues related to inclusion of stakeholders in the self regulatory
framework.
Urjit Patel Committee recommendations
too good to be true? 7 must-know points
Urjit
Patel Committee recommendations are bold and a noble attempt. The arguments for
recommending CPI as a nominal anchor and setting a 2-6% CPI target in the
medium term is a radical step and can be seen as a sincere endeavour against
the backdrop of a stubborn inflation since FY11.
The
key factors:
1.
However, we believe, inflation targeting per se in a country like India will
face some key operational challenges as it will require close co-ordination
with the Government.
2.
This apart, aftermath the financial crisis, there are now renewed thoughts
regarding the efficacy of a blanket inflation targeting. For example, in US, Fed
has recently adopted unemployment as secondary objective underlying the
concerns to growing unemployment situation. In a similar vein, Bank of England
had most recently advocated use of a nominal GDP as a target.
3.
This apart, the evidence of successful inflation targeting in advanced and
particularly emerging economies are also not exactly conclusive, in terms of a
trade-off between social costs of inflation vis-à-vis increased cost of
possible deflation.
4.
The choice of CPI as a nominal anchor in Western and even emerging economies is
also guided by different rational - high household indebtedness - a phenomenon
absent in India. Interestingly, mortgage interest payments are included in CPI
basket in countries like UK, to make the transmission impact more effective.
5.
Furthermore, we also believe that the composition of MPC should be more
broad-based, with even representation of the Government (akin to UK) to have
better monetary and fiscal policy interlinkage.
6.
We also believe that in an emerging economy like India, an exact application of
loanable fund theory (savings as a function of interest rate) may not fully
apply.
7.
Our analysis shows that in the second half of 2000 there was a perceptible
influence of changes in national income in influencing aggregate level of
savings during that period. If that is the case, the central bank may not be
unduly bothered in monetary policy having a specific positive real policy rate
anchor. This is an inevitable consequence in the current
S.C.
BOSE
The famous freedom fighter Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was
born on January 23, 1897 at Oriya bazaar of Cuttack district Orissa. His father
Janaki Nath Bose was a famous lawyer and his mother Prabhavati Devi was a
devout and religious lady. Unlike other prominent leaders of the Indian freedom
struggle, Subhas strongly believed that an armed rebellion was necessary to
wrest independence from the British. Subhas Chandra Bose is popularly known as
'Netaji'. In the year of 1902, when he was only 5 year old, he got
admission in Cuttack Protestant School and then he started his educational
career. In the year of 1909 he got admission in Ravenshaw Collegiate School,
Cuttack. In 1913, he started his higher secondary educational academic career
in Presidency College, Calcutta. On 21st October 1943, Netaji formed
the Indian National Army (I.N.A). Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is
remembered for his Salutation and slogan of 'Jai Hind'. The famous words of
Subash Chandra Bose "Give me blood, I will give you freedom"
encouraged the freedom fighters. The famous book “The Indian Struggle” was
written by him.
Netaji Arrived Tokyo in
May 1943, Bose attracted the attention of the Japanese high command, including
Hideki Tojo, Japan's premier. The Japanese agreed to cooperate in founding an
Indian National Army (INA) in Southeast Asia. Bose was flown to Singapore and
became commander of the INA and head of the Free India provisional government.
The INA included both Indian prisoners of war from Singapore and Indian
civilians in Southeast Asia. The strength of INA grew to 50, 000 and fought
Allied forces in 1944 inside the borders of India at Imphal and in Burma. For
Bose any means and any ally were acceptable in the struggle to liberate India.
By the end of World War II none of Bose's Axis allies had helped, and Bose then
turned to the Soviet Union. On Aug. 18, 1945, it is believed that Bose was en
route to the Soviet Union in a Japanese plane when it crashed in Taiwan,
burning him fatally. However, his death it is very controversial and disputed
subject in India. Due to the lack of evidence and records of his final days in
his life. Bose indirectly and posthumously achieved his goal of Indian
independence.
Bose's earlier
correspondence (prior to 1939) also reflects his deep disapproval of the racist
practices and annulment of democratic institutions in Nazi Germany. He also,
however, expressed admiration for the authoritarian methods (though not the
racial ideologies) which he saw in Italy and Germany during the 1930s, and
thought they could be used in building an independent India.Bose had clearly
expressed his belief that democracy was the best option for India. The pro-Bose
thinkers believe that his authoritarian control of the Azad Hind was based on
political pragmatism and a post-colonial recovery doctrine rather than any
anti-democratic belief.[ However, during the war (and possibly as
early as the 1930s) Bose seems to have decided that no democratic system could
be adequate to overcome India's poverty and social inequalities, and he wrote
that an authoritarian state, similar to that of Soviet Russia (which he had
also seen and admired) would be needed for the process of nation’s re-building.
Accordingly some suggest that Bose's alliance with the Axis power during the
world war was based on more than just pragmatism, and that Bose was a militant
nationalist, though not a Nazi, nor a Fascis. Netaji supported empowerment of
women, secularism and other democratic ideas.
