Aug 13 2014 : The Economic Times (Delhi)

What is Wrong with Crony Capitalism





Shun cronyism, state support is often okay

RBI governor Raghuram Rajan deplored crony capitalism recently , as it harms free enterprise, efficiency and growth. He is, of course, right. But crony capitalism has played a huge role in the initial, economic take-off of practically all countries. The British Crown gave the East India Company a monopoly over trade with India.
Abraham Lincoln, a successful, erstwhile railroad attorney , signed away one-tenth the land of the United States to some railroad companies to connect the east and west coasts of the nation by rail. Krupp and Thyssen grew into the builders of Germany's industrial and military muscle on the strength of the privileged access they had to bank finance. Japanese zaibatsu and South Korean chaebols spearheaded industrial growth in their countries.
China's state-owned and state-backed companies carry the tradition forward.Crony capitalism essentially boils down to the state extending privileged assistance to some companies and not to others. Whether these compa nies are initially chosen because of proximity to those in power, chance or corruption is a matter of detail as far as those who are denied such privileg ed treatment are concerned. In South Korea and Japan, performance in the export market was rigorously applied as a criterion to extend or terminate state patronage.
After a certain level of infrastructural and institutional development, discrimination in dispensing state support stymies competition and reduces efficiency . Till then, state support remains valid, in various ways. And even afterwards, during crises. But the point is to make selection of the recipient of such vital support wholly transparent and open to all players, and not just those who have proximity to the ruling dispensation. No laws of economics and competition dictated that Merrill Lynch should be salvaged while Lehman Brothers was allowed to collapse. As India evolves and acquires institutional maturity , it is imperative to shed cronyism from the process of selecting those to accord state support. But it is too early to rid the system of state support altogether.

Aug 13 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Evolution Of A Nation

Devesh Kapur





Government has expanded massively, but so must its power to deliver public goods to Indians

Two-thirds of a century into India's independence, two aspects of the country's political evolution are noteworthy. The first is the institutionalisation of the periodic transfer of power, peacefully and predictably, recently evident in NDA's victory earlier this year. But the journey has been much rockier with regard to another critical question: how to direct that power for the broader public good.While popular commentary on political power focusses on its misuse for private gain or corruption, there has been less attention on the limited ability of political power to translate intentions into outcomes.
The history of independent India is replete with government programmes, ranging from stateowned enterprises to multiple poverty programmes, where political power did have good intentions, but where outcomes have left much to be desired. Critics have put the onus on misaligned incentives and a craven politicalbureaucratic nexus.
These factors have their roots in a distinctive feature of India's political evolution: namely the weakness of the Indian state, hobbled as much by lack of competence as by corruption. Historically the state in India has always been weak and this changed only modestly after Independence. Yes, the state expanded massively; and yes the social composition of the functionaries of the Indian state has changed markedly. Size and social legitimacy undoubtedly have built state `strength' ­ the negative power of the Indian state to thwart is certainly manifest. But positive power ­ the power to do something, to execute programmes and provide basic public goods that are the bread and butter of a state's responsibilities to its citizens ­ is still a far cry.
Why strong states develop in some societies and not in others is a complex historical question.
One argument is that a strong state can only be built on a firm foundation of nationhood which itself is still a work-in-progress in India. Another view is that warfare laid the foundations of the modern nation state especially in Europe and East Asia.
Historian Charles Tilly famously argued that states make war and war makes states, a reference to the rise of the modern European state after centuries of warfare among hundreds of polities and kingdoms. The ability to wage war successfully requires states to create viable systems of taxation, mobilisation and coordination ­ and only those states that can, survive. But these attributes are also critical for any modern state to deliver public goods and services.
Societies that have been wracked by violence and convulsions may also have a greater desire for `order' and hence a strong state. Over the last two centuries China underwent massive convulsions that resulted in a staggering death toll. Between the Taiping rebellion in the mid-19th century which led to an estimated 25-30 million deaths to the famines that followed on the heels of the Great Leap Forward a century later (with an estimated 30 million deaths), China underwent horrific violence whether due to the Japanese invasion or the Civil War.
Dark memories of the chaos and violence of the Cultural Revolution have left a deep imprint on Chinese political elites and in part explain their phobia towards any prospect of disorder ­ and of Chinese society for a strong state.
In contrast, other than the Great Bengal Famine and Partition, India did not undergo national trauma in the 19th and 20th centuries remotely comparable to what Chinese society underwent.
The total number of Indian military casualties in all wars after Independence is about one-fifteenth the casualties China suffered during the Korean war alone.
But while these explanations might help understand the past, they are hardly a guide to the future. Wars and social convulsions are wracking countries from the Congo to Iraq ­ and if anything destroying even the limited state institutions that existed in these countries. India's political evolution will be incomplete unless it finds better pathways to build stronger state institutions.
A singular weakness of the debate on India's public institutions is that attention is almost exclusively focussed on entry, as attested by the recent uproar on the modalities of the civil services exam conducted by UPSC and the enormous energy spent on expanding reservations.
But what should be the starting point of debates on public institutions has unfortunately also become the end point. What happens post-entry gets short shrift. In particular there is little debate that employment and representation is only one goal of public institutions. Serving the public is surely more important. This requires that organisations build internal cohesiveness, a shared sense of purpose and an esprit de corps.
Ascriptive identities can be the basis of recruitment, but postrecruitment the organisation's identity must be paramount. Else, the result is fragmentation and the absence of shared goals, and critically the absence of any accountability . The result is that India's public institutions end up serving their employees more than the public.
One public institution that at least today recruits from a reasonably broad social base but then drills and trains the recruits so that they share a common organisational ethos is the army. It offers a lesson on how debates on public institutions need to shift from who gets in to what happens to them once they get in. When that happens, India's public institutions will perform better and state power will better serve the public good. And India's political evolution will become more mature.
The writer is director, Centre for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania.

International Journal of Rural Management

Table of Contents

April 2014; 10 (1)

Articles

• Select this article
  • Sylvain Charlebois and
   
  • Amit Summan

  Abattoirs, Meat Processing and Managerial Challenges: A Survey for Lagging Rural Regions and Food Entrepreneurs in Ontario, Canada

  International Journal of Rural Management April 2014 10: 1-20,doi:10.1177/0973005214526504
  • Abstract
   
  • Full Text (PDF)
   
  • References
• Select this article
  • Kasper Aalling Teilmann and
   
  • Annette Aagaard Thuesen

  Important Types of LAG–Municipality Interaction When Collaborating on Rural Development: Lessons from Danish LEADER LAGs

  International Journal of Rural Management April 2014 10: 21-45,doi:10.1177/0973005214526501
  • Abstract
   
  • Full Text (PDF)
   
  • References
• Select this article
  • Chandan Kumar Sharma and
   
  • Indrani Sarma

  Issues of Conservation and Livelihood in a Forest Village of Assam

  International Journal of Rural Management April 2014 10: 47-68,doi:10.1177/0973005214526502
  • Abstract
   
  • Full Text (PDF)
   
  • References
• Select this article
  • Muhammad Azhar Khan, 
  • Muhammad Zahir Khan, 
  • Khalid Zaman, 
  • and Ayisha Khan

  Poverty–Growth–Inequality Triangle by Principal Component Analysis:With an Empirical Illustration Using Pakistan’s Data

  International Journal of Rural Management April 2014 10: 69-86,doi:10.1177/0973005214531772
  • Abstract
   
  • Full Text (PDF)
   
  • References

Book Review

• Select this article
  • Atanu Bhattacharya

  Book Review: Maitrayee Mukerji, ICTs and Development: A Study of Telecentres in Rural India

  International Journal of Rural Management April 2014 10: 87-89,doi:10.1177/0973005214526500
  • Full Text (PDF)

Aug 12 2014 : The Economic Times (Delhi)

Tata-SIA Airline Joint Venture Named Vistara

NEW DELHI OUR BUREAU





Derived from Sanskrit word that means limitless expanse, Vistara to start operations from Oct; also unveils uniforms of cabin crew and pilots

The full-service airline by the Tata Group and Singapore International Airlines (SIA), likely to be launched by October, will be called Vistara, derived from the Sanskrit word that means limitless expanse.“We actually went through over 500 names to select this. We did debate and discuss on whether we should be leveraging our parents' names but we decided that the airline needs no introduction. We decided to create a niche for ourselves, independent of the parents, in this market and globally,“ Phee Teik Yeoh, chief executive officer of Vistara, told ET.
The branding is in line with the strategy of Singapore Airlines, which gave new names to two other carriers it controls -SilkAir for regional routes and Scoot for its low-fare alternative.
The airline also announced that it would take delivery of its first A-320 aircraft by early September and induct five planes by December. The start of operations is subject to approval from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), which is examining the airline's application for an air operator's permit (AOP). The airline is in the last lap of the process of securing the AOP and expects to conduct a proving flight by the end of September.
The carrier also unveiled the uniforms of the cabin crew and pilots, put together by designers David Abraham and Rakesh Thakore.
The New Delhi-based airline has already leased 20 Airbus A-320s, in cluding seven A-320 Neos, which would be inducted over five years.
The airline had earlier said it would begin services in five cities and then go up to 11 cities within a year of operations. It plans to have 87 weekly flights linking Delhi with Mumbai, Goa, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Jammu, Srinagar, Patna and Chandigarh. The carrier has made Delhi its operational hub because of capacity constraints at Mumbai airport.
Tata Sons tied up with Singapore Airlines on September 19, 2013, to launch a full-service airline in India with an initial investment of $100 million. While Tata Sons holds a 51% stake in the airline, SIA owns the rest.

Aug 12 2014 : The Times of India (Ahmedabad)

China beats India to launch its national online donor registry

TNN





Indian States Have Taken Steps, But No Nationwide Database In Sight Yet

Most countries with active organ transplant programmes have a system of registries to track the donation and allocation system. The latest to join this club is China, which launched an online registry this March.With the registry launch anyone above 16 can log on to the website and become a volunteer.

China launched its organ donation system in 2010 after a trial run. The country’s National Health and Family Planning Commission mandates that donated organs be assigned to patients by a computerized system. Organs go to those with the most medical need, regardless of social status or wealth. About 300,000 Chinese need organ transplants each year, but roughly 10,000 get one because of shortages. The ratio in the US is one in four.

While individual states in India have taken steps to set up such registries, there is none at the national level though the amended organ transplant law seeks such a network of registries.

In the US, the National Organ Transplant Act came into force in 1984 and an Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) was created. It’s run by a private non profit United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS).

Government provides a regulatory framework. Nearly 300,000 people are registered as donors — over 167,000 deceased donors
and more than 130,000 living. All organs put together, the US has a waiting list of over 134,000. The UNOS organ-sharing system maximizes efficient use of deceased organs combining medical utility with justice. Key factors include: attaining the longest patient survival time; striving to improve a patient's quality of life; and a cost-benefit ratio. The `justice' component includes factors such as: priority to patients whose needs are most urgent; to those who've spent the longest time on the waiting list and local access to organs. Selection of recipients from the waiting list uses a point system, which varies by organ.
The European Union has a European Registry linking national and regional databases to allow seamless sharing of national data. The EU registry has a legal framework on donor selection, waiting list and organ allocation which tries to harmonize different donation laws in EU countries. The European Framework for Evaluation of Organ Transplants was constituted to promote a common definition of terms and methodologies to evaluate transplantation results and promote a registry or network of registries.
In the UK, the National Health Service Blood and Transplant was set up in 2005 to ensure efficient supply of blood, organs and associated services to the National Health Service. The UK too has a comprehensive policy for selection and allocation of organs.
Presented by In 2013-14, UK had 1,320 deceased donors who made over 3,500 transplants possible. There were over 1,100 living donors.
Globally , several registries are set up simultaneously to track the organ transplantation systems to ensure ethical and safety norms as recommended by WHO.

Aug 12 2014 : The Times of India (Ahmedabad)

Awaas Yojana to shed Indira's name

Subodh.Ghildiyal @timesgroup.com

New Delhi:





Indira Gandhi's name is set to be removed from the popular rural housing programme that provides subsidies to the poor to have a house of their own, in a move which will symbolize the regime change.The rural development ministry is looking to turn Indira Awaas Yojana, a scheme, into a “mission“ with increased budget and with an important design innovation which mandates toilets to be part of the housing units constructed under the scheme.
If the `mission mode' is approved, Indira Awaas Yojana would be called `National Gramin Awaas Mission'.
The first step towards erasing Congress's imprint on the scheme has come in the rural development ministry's “discussion paper“ that has the prospective title in place of IAY.
The proposed name ­ National Gramin Awaas Mission ­ is set to cause heartburn in the Congress camp. This is because Indira remains the topmost party icon and her name figures more than any other leader's in government nomenclature, be it a place or scheme. Her son Rajiv and father Jawaharlal Nehru are others after whom schemes and venues are named, a source of standing criticism of Congress.
Though Congress will not like the scrapping of Indira's name, the rural development ministry has amplified its intent by public circulation of the discussion paper with a title shorn of the Congress imprimatur.
For Congress, just humiliated in the Lok Sabha elections, this may be a red rag from PM Narendra Modi who does not miss an opportunity to needle the rival by proclaiming “Congress-mukt Bharat“ as his political objective, asserting that he wants to eliminate the premier party from the political landscape.
Removing the Congress leader's name from the rural housing scheme is set to be seen from the political prism.
More may be in the offing.
The Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission has just expired and the Centre is likely to unfurl its new avatar without the name of the country's first PM.
If Congress has for years ignored the criticism of its method, it is because it views strategic significance in embedding the Nehru-Gandhi family in welfare schemes. With its positioning as a pro-poor party , the party has effectively used the names to etch its authorship of major schemes in the minds of beneficiaries.
The fear of renewed sniping from rivals made Congress prefix the name of Mahatma Gandhi to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act when it was renamed. But here too, Congress has a claim on the father of the nation ahead of the rivals.

UGC Offers Scholarships for the third gender:

After offering a third gender status in the application form in the Indian universities, University Grants Commission (UGC) now decides to offer scholarship and fellowship schemes to the transgender candidates.

The recent SC verdict states that the eunuchs, apart from the binary gender should be treated as the third gender in order to safeguard their rights under the Indian Constitution and laws framed by the Parliament and state legislatures.

According to a UGC official, this scholarship for the transgender category is to make sure that no student is deprived of higher education due to lack of funds.

Vivek Anand , CEO, Humsafar Trust, which safeguards and promotes right to the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community states that this act of the UGC will help lot of star performers from the LGBT community belonging to the socially and economically backward communities who drop out due to lack of guidance.

- See more at: http://digitallearning.eletsonline.com/2014/08/ugc-offers-scholarships-for-the-third-gender/#sthash.XLiOk7ep.dpuf