Happy Diwali from WARMONGER George Bush as Indian Speaker Ex CPIM Vetran Stops Parliament to Discuss Nuke Deal Betrayal!Come, Say, War against Terro

Happy Diwali from WARMONGER George Bush as Indian Speaker Ex CPIM Vetran Stops Parliament to Discuss Nuke Deal Betrayal!Come, Say, War against Terror is translated in Global Financial Crisis! Poor Bush replicates BRAND BUDDHA! Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to ask Tata to bring Nano back in West Bengal.US govt to Buy Stake in Insurance Companies! India, China Join Hands to Tackle Financial Crisis.Govt Secures Rs 216-crore Bank Guarantee from India Inc



Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams: Chapter 92

Palash Biswas

YouTube - Somnath deemed a martyr in Bolpur25 Jul 2008 ... In his constituency Bolpur from where Somnath Chaterjee has won for more than two decades he is nothing less than a martyr.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=26FmXuUGbgM - 92k -

Nano back in Bengal? Buddha to meet Tata

KOLKATA, Oct. 24: Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will take up with the Tata group chief Mr Ratan Tata the demand for bringing back the “Nano” project to Singur.
The chief minister reportedly said this to a delegation of the Nano Banchao Committee (save Nano committee) that met him today at Writers’ Buildings with the demand that Mr Tata be persuaded to reconsider his decision to relocate the project at Sanand and set up the factory at its original site.
Mr Bhattacharjee discussed the issue with the committee members for about an hour, Mr Udayan Das, its spokesman said.
The committee insisted that with most of the local people giving their land for the project and 85 per cent of its work completed, the small car project should be at Singur.
On the other hand, Mr Benoy Konar, CPI-M central committee member, said during the day that the state government would ask the Tata Motors to return the Singur land “if the latter is not to set up the car plant there.” He, however, didn't answer how the question of the Tatas' plan to roll out the small car from Singur could arise after Mr Tata shifted the project from the state to Gujarat. Mr Das claimed many of the unwilling farmers, who hadn't given their consent for the acquisition of their land, were now volunteering to part with their land and that they had joined the resistance movement “because of intimidation by Opposition activists.”
The people of Singur would like the “Nano" to be the first industrial project in the area, he said when asked whether the state government's plans to get other projects would be welcomed.
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=23&theme=&usrsess=1&id=228334
Market sources say that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is considering meeting Ratan Tata to ask him to bring the Nano project back in West Bengal.

Tata faced protests from opposition political parties in the state who wanted more money for the farmers who gave their land for the project.

Tata finally decided to move the plant away from Singur in West Bengal.

They are now working on setting up the plant in Gujarat.

Members of Nano Banchao Committee met West Bengal CM with the request to ask Tata Motors to reconsider their plans to move the Nano plant away from the state.

Tata Nano is expected to be launched in the coming months and it would then become the cheapest car in the world.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told AFP Saturday it was possible to reach "concrete and important" decisions at a summit next month in Washington on the global financial crisis!

Joining a global equity rout on worries about a sharp global recession, domestic indices fell to their lowest levels in nearly three years on “Black Friday” as the benchmark BSE 30-Share Sensex tumbled by 1070.63 points to close at 8701.07.

World leaders called for an urgent overhaul of international financial systems and China demanded stricter regulations in the face of dramatic losses on the markets and a sliding world economy.

President Hu Jintao said on Saturday that China and India should have a “far-sighted, strategic and long-term perspective” even as they join hands to deal with the global financial crisis.

China and India have maintained sound relations and economic cooperation and collaborated in international affairs, Hu told Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the sidelines of the just concluded 7th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM).

Premier Wen Jiabao said on Saturday China would take an active role in a crucial international summit in the United States next month aimed at tackling the global financial meltdown.


Recession has come. And it is not only the Greed of the Galaxy Ruling Hegemony, not only the sub prime crisis, not only the melting down, It is also the War against Terror launched jointly by US Zionist Money Machine, Zionist Gestapo and Nuclear non nuclear weapon Industry for which every Human being on this Planet has to suffer! The Starvation just has begun! The Job Crunch is only in primary stage! We have to bear with many more Tsunamies yet to cross the Continental Waters!Hindutva bomb has exploded!Christianity in India feels the heat and dust. Poor Bush is a better Marxist when he nationalises Bank stakes and fidel castro or Chavej also laud him! but in his bid of financial rescue, more or less, he replicates our own BRAND BUDDHA in Marxist Ruled west bengal in India!

US President George W Bush has wished an "uplifting and hopeful" Diwali to the Indian American community in Washington, saying the festival reminds of the great blessings of religious freedom and the two nations' strong traditions of faith. On the other hand, Indian speaker, the Ex CPIM Vetran Somanth Chattopaddhaya suceeds to stop discussion on the Nuke Deal betrayal in the Parliament!Meanwhile agencies report that Quality of secondary education, cost of starting a business and the lack of government effectiveness are among the reasons why India ranked 70th among 104 nations on the World Prosperity Index (WPI) 2008. Increase in capital and education contribute directly to the value of physical and human capital and thus directly increase economic output. Poor governance and excessive bureaucracy impose costs on business and thus restrain growth, the report released last week said. The Institute also ranks India at 10th place on its 'Who's Going Places' list, with China on number six.

Following its purchase of shares of leading US banks, the US government is considering buying equity stakes in insurance companies using the $700-billion rescue package approved by Congress, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

The newspaper said the insurance firms are offering their shares themselves, feeling they could benefit from the government's money pool amid financial turmoil.

Citing people familiar with the matter, The Journal said MetLife Inc., Prudential Financial Inc., and New York Life Insurance Co. were interested in exploring a sale of equity stakes to the government.

Yesterday, PNC Financial Services Group Inc., said The Treasury Department would buy $7.7 billion worth of preferred stock and warrants.

Last month, the US government saved from bankruptcy American International Group (AIG), a giant insurance company.

Meanwhile,Asian and European leaders said on Saturday they have reached a broad consensus on ways to deal with the global financial meltdown and will present their views at a crisis summit next month in Washington.

Speaking at the close of a two-day Asia-Europe Meeting in China's capital, the leaders called for new rules for guiding the global economy and a leading role for the International Monetary Fund in aiding crisis-stricken countries.

The biennial forum, known as ASEM, generally does not make decisions, and a statement issued by the leaders indicated how much the crisis in global markets has driven world opinion and institutions.

"I'm pleased to confirm a shared determination and commitment of Europe and Asia to work together," EU Commission President Jose Barroso said at a closing news conference.

He said participants would use the statement as the basis of their approach at the Nov. 15 Washington summit of the 20 largest economies.

On the other hand,a string of US banks have signed up for the government's offer of a cash injection in a bid to revive the sector, which has suffered since
lending dried up and many of the loans banks made have gone bad.

The US Treasury Department plans to provide funds for 20 to 22 additional lenders as part of its next round of a $250 billion bank recapitalization program. Banks that have announced they will use the government's funds: PNC Financial Services Group Inc ($7.7 billion) Regions Financial Corp ($3.5 billion) First Horizon National Corp ($866 million) Valley National Bancorp ($330 million).


But we indians are quite detached with realities around the globe and indulge ourselves in Virtual reality, enjoying new found Hindu Nuclear Super Power status coupled with United states of America!

Buoyed by the successful launch of the country's maiden unmanned moon mission Chandrayaan-1, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is all set to start an institute to train astronauts for its planned first manned space mission by 2015, said a top official.

"Bangalore is our chosen destination to set up a state-of-the-art institute to train astronauts for our manned space mission. We have already got 40 acres of land near the new airport at Devanahalli (about 35 km from city centre) and the state government has promised to provide us with another 100 acres soon," ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair told reporters on Saturday at the Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) at Byalalu, about 40 km from Bangalore.

On the other hand, The government has cracked down on India Inc for alleged duty evasion in import of aircraft, and has secured bank guarantee worth Rs 216 c
rore from 12 leading business houses.

"We have received bank guarantee to the tune of Rs 216.37 crore and bond worth Rs 995.57 crore from various business houses whose aircraft we have seized, some of which have been provisionally released," a top officer of Customs Preventive, North Zone, who did not wish to be identified, said.

Giving an overview of the department's half-yearly performance, he said the total value of the 15 aircraft seized in the last three months amounted to Rs 1,138.31 crore.

The crackdown initiated by the department had caught many business houses unawares with aircraft of leading corporates promoted by top businessmen, including Mukesh Ambani, his brother Anil, TATA, GMR, and Oberoi groups, among others being seized.

Some of the aircraft were later provisionally released on the basis of bank guarantee of the duty demanded and bond of the value of the aircraft given by such companies.

The latest aircraft to be seized by the department was a Gulf Stream G-200 belonging to Punj Lloyd Aviation Ltd, for which a show-cause notice would be issued soon.

The official said over 200 aircraft imported under the Non Schedule Operator Permit (NSOP), which were given duty exemption, are being probed, "since many aircraft were being used for personal purpose".

Meanwhile, the department which has also initiated crackdown on import of luxury cars has seized seven cars including a 'Hummer' for duty evasion at the time of import by 'misrepresenting facts'.

"The total spot recovery of duty in the last six months amounts to Rs 48.14 crore and the total value of seizures made is Rs 1,381.62 crore," he said.

The department also recovered Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) totalling Rs 61 lakh during the same period in seven cases at the Munabao Land Customs Station in Rajasthan and one at the Attari Land Customs Station in Amritsar.

The department also recovered 45 kgs of heroin and 50 kgs of charas with Pakistani markings in its zone, the official said.

The Indian Speaker did not consider privilege notice against PM, the Washington supreme slave Dr Manmohan Singh. He misused his office to stall the debate on the Great Indian Nuke Deal betrayal! He helped the UPA NDA Bail out plan during last Parliament Session and sided with the colonial Government of India negelecting Party Whip. the Ruling Hegemony did not take any time to make him the most valuable Brahaminical Icon as his father Late Shri N.C. Chatterjee, a hindu mahasabha leader, was a close associate of Partition criminal Shyama Prasad Mukherjee!

We should never forget that until recently, Somnath Chatterjee, the speaker enjoyed another post of benefit. He had been the President of west bengal industrial development corporation. He is the man who instituted the Indiscriminate land aquisition in west bengal reversing the Party Line of Land reforms and rural Development. In shantineketn he allotted land to Realty Dealers on the name of industrialisation violating the authority of Vishwa Bharati! Even Mahashweta Debi led a land movement in shantiniketan . For which CPIM launched an all out attack against the most respected writer to defend the shanti Niketan DON! Now it happens to be a reverse game. One time friends turned into Foes wanting blood. both defending the Brahaminical hegemony in bengal and rest of the country! What an Amusement!

What about the planted PRIME MINISTER?

On a day the sensex plunged over a thousand points back home, inm Beijing, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh used the forum of the Seventh Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM-7) to concede for the first time that the international financial crisis was beginning to have a grave impact on India for no fault of its own.

Seeking strengthening of global co-operation to combat terrorism, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday said there cannot be sustainable development, a major challenge faced by the world, without peace. "Without peace there can be no sustainable development. Terrorism, extremism, and intolerance threaten our social cohesion," Singh said in his address to the 7th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Summit.

The Prime Minister repeated the government’s standard mantra — that the banking system was sound and that the economy was slated to grow at 7 to 7.5 per cent. But shedding the usual complacency, Singh went on to admit that India cannot remain unaffected for long.

“Our stock markets and the exchange rate of the rupee are under pressure due to capital outflow of foreign institutional investors. Sooner or later, the real economy is bound to experience the pain,” he said.

Singh, however, did not confine himself to a description of the crisis but went on to offer some concrete proposals — one reason, perhaps, that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao placed on record his appreciation of Singh’s speech.

Mind you, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee on Monday said he has received a privilege notice against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in
connection with the Indo-US civil nuclear deal and it was under his consideration.

Trying to pacify the agitated Left members who wanted to raise the issue of alleged breach of privilege against Singh, Chatterjee said, "I have received the notice and it is under my consideration."

Raising the issue, Basudeb Acharia of CPM alleged the Prime Minister failed to fulfil his promise to the House made in July that he would come back to Parliament before operationalising the Indo-US civil nuclear deal.

The government went to the US without informing the House, Acharia said adding, "the Prime Minister owes an explanation to the House. This is a breach of privilege."

What was the result ultimately? The Nation witnessed a classic version of reality show BIG BOSS. How GOT UP was the game! The calculated planned riots in maharashtra as well as Bihar and at lats the Emotional Outbirst of the Indian speaker. It left no space for either Nuke Deal or Financial crisis. No body questioned Dr manmohan singh what a traitor he has turned to be! No Body asked the Chettiayar World bank IMF Gang a single question why they Feed the Killing Money machine misusing FINMIN and RBI!

The Shantiniketan don managed everything with surgical precision . A mega hit Block buster! Let our Bollywood Tollywood stars learn how to create a real drama!

In a rare moment in India’s parliamentary history, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee on Friday walked out of the House and threatened to resign after the confrontation between him and the Left MPs flared up once again.

A visibly hurt Chatterjee said he felt “tortured by the repeated questioning of his decisions”, in an apparent reference to his verbal duel with the Left MPs in the House.

The already strained relations between the Speaker and his former colleagues took a turn for the worse when Chatterjee rejected CPI-M leader Basudeb Acharia’s notice for an adjournment motion on the attacks on Christians in Orissa and Karnataka.

When the CPI-M and CPI members insisted that the issue be discussed, Chatterjee said: “This is most unfortunate. I will show you video clippings. Say where the discussion could have been allowed.”

Day four of the week and not a single question taken up. On Thursday, when disruptions in the Lok Sabha were again the order of the day, Speaker Somnath Chatterjee had had enough and said in an emotional outburst that he was on his way out but the institution should remain and "democracy be strengthened".

Chatterjee lashed out at the MPs at 11 a.m. soon after the day's proceedings began. Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Basudeb Acharya began the day by getting up to draw the chair's attention towards a notice given by him.

After repeated interruptions, the speaker took control of the house and said: "Please show a little respect. This has become the fashion nowadays. If you think that you are strengthening the cause of democracy, it is for you to decide. I am on my way out. Do not think that it will influence me. The house should remain."

"I am not aspirant for anything... personally you can take it that I am out, for all purposes. But I want this institution, which I am associated with for nearly 40 years, to remain... I am going back with lot of pain and agony from this house, but I want this house to remain, this house to function and democracy should be strengthened."

A visibly agitated Chatterjee said about the repeated adjournments of the house: "Today is the fourth day of this week. We have not had even one question taken up; not a single matter could be taken up or discussed; you have very important matters."

He asked the parliamentarians to introspect.

"Every day, one second past 11 a.m, the commotion starts; I am making repeated appeals. If there is anything called truth, please go through it and bear me out. I will allow all subjects to be discussed."

Recalling his promise to house leaders that he would allow five important matters to be discussed in the house, the speaker challenged his opponents and asked: "Can anybody show that I deliberately did not allow any matter which could be raised."

"Naturally, I will be targeted, but I do not mind," he said.

"My only reply is, please do some introspection. Please consider yourself, whether all of us are contributing to the functioning of this house. If I am wrong, you can show me."



The President and the First Lady Laura Bush sent their greetings through the members of the community who came to the Indian Treaty Room of the White House to mark the occasion as it had been done in past years of the Republican administration.

"I send Greetings to those celebrating Deepavali (Diwali), the Festival of Lights" Bush said in a Message. "The candle's flames represent the light of hope and in the blessings of life. The light from these candles reminds observers that good always triumphs over evil and we go forward in confidence that it will continue to prevail in the future" he added.

The President said, "This joyous festival reminds all citizens of the great blessings of religious freedom and our nations strong traditions of faith."

"Laura and I send our Best Wishes for an uplifting and hopeful Diwali," Bush added. "During Diwali, millions of Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains around the world will join together setting out 'diyas' and enjoying fireworks in celebration of the Festival of Lights," he said.

President Bush addresses the Indian ruling Brahaminical class in accordance with the Post Modern Manusmriti Aparteid Galaxy Zionist Hindu White Oredr of mass destruction! While, The global financial crisis inflicted more pain on a wide range of corporate sectors, prompting heavy losses in stock markets, while the IMF readied a rescue of some 200 billion dollars for debt-laden countries. Amid grim financial news from around the world, stocks saw another tumultuous day yesterday, starting with a horrific 9.6 per cent slump in Tokyo shares that spilled over to Europe, where London's FTSE plunged 5.0 per cent.


The function in the White House on Friday was said to have been attended by between 80 to 100 members of the Indian American community including the leadership with some of them travelling from Philadelphia, Detroit and Florida; Congressional Staffers of the Indian American community and senior officials of the Embassy of India.

Addressing the gathering, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez lauded the India-US relations and the important positions held by members of the Indian American community in both the government and the private sectors.

"This year's celebration of Diwali in the White House has a special meaning for both countries since it crowns a momentous year during which our countries came together closer than ever before" said Arathi Krishna, the Community Development Officer at the Embassy of India and one of the attendees of yesterday's event.

The best word to describe what's going on right now is panic," said Credit Suisse strategist Satoru Ogasawara. Wall Street followed other exchanges downwards as a wave of panic selling and a meltdown in share prices swept around the world.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slumped 312.30 points (3.59 per cent) to close at 8,378.95, in a volatile session that saw the blue-chip index down as much as 500 points. The market action capped a week with a drop of more than five per cent for the US blue-chip index.

Iceland's government said it had asked for two billion dollars (1.58 billion euros) of support from the International Monetary Fund, the first Western country to do so since 1976, to help emerge from a collapse of its banking sector.

The IMF said it had tentatively agreed to the loan and announced it had set aside more cash to rescue stricken nations.

"The IMF has more than 200 billion dollars of loan-able funds and can draw on additional resources through two standing borrowing arrangements with groups of IMF member countries," the institution said on its website.

French auto giants PSA Peugeot-Citroen and Renault ordered huge production cuts, while Japan's electronics giant Sony Corp. and Europe's biggest airline Air France-KLM issued profits warnings.

In Britain, official figures confirmed the country was about to enter a recession while Turkey's central bank took action to strengthen bank liquidity and prop up its slumping currency.

Chrysler LLC, the number three US automaker, said it would cut up to 5,000 white-collar jobs by the end of the year as prospects in the sector grow dimmer.

ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steel producer, shut smelting furnaces on a temporary basis in France, Germany and Belgium, according to union chiefs who met with management.

New figures showed industrial confidence in both France and Italy had fallen to the lowest level since 1993. There was also bleak data on the jobs front with Spain's unemployment rate jumping to 11.33 per cent -- the highest level in more than four years.

The combined impact sent shares tumbling in Asia, Europe and the Americas. Japan's Nikkei index plunged 9.60 per cent, ending below the key 8,000-point level for the first time in more than five years, and Hong Kong fell 8.3 per cent. European shares had lost up to 10 per cent by midday trade before mounting a late rally.

French shares still fell 3.54 per cent to finish at five-year lows, while Frankfurt's DAX 30 lost 4.96 per cent. Latin America's largest economy Brazil saw its Sao Paulo bourse plunge 6.9 per cent on Friday.

Mexico's stock exchange closed down 4.61 per cent, while Argentina's main market in Buenos Aires sank 7.61 per cent to cap a miserable stocks week in the region.

Technology giant Sony, a bellwether of corporate Japan, saw its shares plunge more than 11 per cent after forecasting net profit of 150 billion yen (1.55 billion dollars) for the year to March, down 59 per cent on last year.

CHATTERJEE, SHRI SOMNATH
[COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA (MARXIST) - BOLPUR (WEST BENGAL)
Father's Name Late Shri N.C. Chatterjee

Date of Birth 25 July 1929

Place of Birth Tezpur (Assam)

Marital Status Married on 7 February 1950

Spouse's Name Smt. Renu Chatterjee

Children One son and two daughters

Education M.A. (Cantab), Bar-at-law
Educated at Calcutta University, Calcutta;
Cambridge University and Middle Temple (U.K.)

Profession Advocate, Trade Unionist, Political and Social Worker

Permanent Address P-514, Raja Basanta Roy Road,
Calcutta- 700029
(West Bengal)
Tels. (033) 464-4321, 466-2203
Fax. 466-2900

Present Address 21, Ashoka Road,
New Delhi-110001
Tel. (011) 3365036
Fax. (011) 3345305

Positions Held
1968 Member, Communist Party of India (Marxist) [C.P.I.(M)] onwards
1971 Elected to 5th Lok Sabha
Member, Joint Committee on Amendment of Election Laws
1971-77 Member, Committee on Privileges
Member, Joint Committee on Offices of Profit
1977 Re-elected to 6th Lok Sabha (2nd term)
1977-79 Chairman, Committee on Subordinate Legislation
Member, Joint Select Committee on Prasar Bharati Bill
Member, Consultative Committee, Ministry of Law,
Justice and Company Affairs
1980 Re-elected to 7th Lok Sabha (3rd term)
1980-84 Member, Consultative Committee, Ministry of Finance
Member, Committee on Privileges
1985 Re-elected to 8th Lok Sabha (4th term)
1986-89 Member, Rules Committee
Member, Committee on Privileges
Member, Joint Committee on Lok Pal Bill
Member, Joint Committee on Prasar Bharati Bill
1987 Member, State Committee, [C.P.I.(M)], West Bengal
1989 Re-elected to 9th Lok Sabha (5th term)
1990 Member,Committee to Review Lok Sabha Secretariat Rules,1955
1990-91 Chairman, Committee on Privileges Member, General Purposes Committee
Member, Consultative Committee, Ministry of Home Affairs
1991 Re-elected to 10th Lok Sabha (6th term)
1991-93 Chairman, Committee on Subordinate Legislation
1991-97 Leader, [C.P.I.(M)] in Lok Sabha
1993-96 Chairman, Committee on Railways
1996 Re-elected to 11th Lok Sabha (7th term)
1996-97 Chairman, Committee on Communications
1998 Re-elected to 12th Lok Sabha (8th term)
Member, Central Committee, CPI(M) Parliamentary Party, Lok Sabha
1998-99 Chairman, Committee on Communications
Member, General Purposes Committee Member,
Consultative Committee, Ministry of Home Affairs
1999 Re-elected to 13th Lok Sabha (9th term)

Books Published

Contributed a chapter on Emergency and Parliament in 25 years of
Parliament (Lok Sabha Secretariat Publication)
Literary, Artistic and Scientific Accomplishments
Collection of Speeches delivered in Fifth and Sixth Lok Sabha; contributed articles in
leading journals, publications including Lok Sabha publications

Social and Cultural Activities
Connected with various educational, cultural and professional institutions and trade unions

Special Interests
Law and civil liberties; small scale industries and problems relating to education

Favourite Pastime and Recreation
Gardening, reading and watching sports events
Sports and Clubs

Member, Executive Committee, Mohan Bagan Athletic Club; Member,
(i)Lake Club;
(ii)Calcutta Club;
(iii)Bengal Club;
(iv)Bhowanipore
(v)Cricket Association of Bengal, Calcutta
(vi)India International Centre;

Chairman,
(i)Bengal Table Tennis Association; and
(ii)Life Saving Society, Calcutta

GJM suspends stir temporarily
2008-10-25 [16:08:00 hrs]

Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), which is demanding a separate state of Gorkhaland to be carved out of North Bengal, has temporarily suspended its agitation in the hills of Darjeeling.


The agitation has been suspended to ensure that the tripartite talks with the Centre scheduled for November are held in a congenial atmosphere.

However, there is no rollback on the core demand. Gorkhaland, they believe, is the only way to protect the Gorkha identity.

For the last three months, those demanding Gorkhaland had taken to the streets, forcing cars to change number plates from WB to GL, defacing government signboards and forcing people to wear only traditional clothes.

The agitation has been suspended but the pitch of the demand for Gorkhaland is only getting louder.

"This is my take for Gorkhaland by 2010. If by then it does not happen, it will get difficult for the government," said Bimal Gurung.

Underlying the demand for statehood is the issue of identity of Indian Gurkhas, who feel they are often mistaken for citizens of Nepal. This, they say, is fallout of the 1950 Indo Nepal Treaty that did not give Nepal's citizens the right to vote but allowed them to live and work in India.

Even Gorkha soldiers of the Indian Army argue that non-demarcation between Indian Gurkhas and Nepali citizens is a loss of face for them.

"We Indian Gurkhas have been voting in the various elections like Lok Sabha and state elections but the Nepal citizens have also found their names in the electoral rolls. But who will identify them unless the 1950 Treaty is amended or it is scrapped. Then only the separate identity of the Indian Gurkhas and the Nepalese citizens will be established in India," said Colonel J K Dixit, general secretary, Bhoopoorva Gurkha Sainik Morcha of Darjeeling zone.

The scheduled Tripartite talks in November, like the last one in June, will be held at the secretary level. But with the Gorkhaland demand impacting India's foreign policy on Nepal, Morcha leaders want that the issue be discussed at a political level.

"We might ask for political level of talks because this is at the secretariat level. We are not very optimistic but not pessimistic either," said Amar Lama, member, central committee, GJMM.

The ethnic dress code my be a treat for tourists but not for the CPM led Left Front government of West Bengal. The picture paints a stark reality that the demand for a separate Gorkhaland state is not going to die out soon.

People should come forward and protest Gorkhaland agitation: Biman Bose
2008-10-24 [12:59:44 hrs]

Terming the ongoing Gorkhaland agitation as an attempt to split West Bengal into small parts, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) Thursday urged the people to unitedly protest against the ‘unscrupulous elements’ who were trying to disturb the state’s integrity.


‘The non-cooperation movement of the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM) has now become a state of lawlessness. Some bad elements, both in the hills and the plains, are trying to disturb the law and order and social fabric of the hills. All political parties and more over people from different strata should come forward and protest against these ill-attempts,’ CPI-M state secretary Biman Bose told a press conference here.

He said the GJM movement in Darjeeling was affecting the local people and the tourism, which is the main source of living in that region.

‘This year, during pujas, the tourist arrivals have gone down substantially,’ he added.

Criticising the demand that three West Bengal districts - Purulia, Bankura and West Midnapore - be included in the neighbouring Jharkhand, he said: ‘These evil attempts can only be defeated if people can stand up against these type of demands.’

Bose also condemned the Maharastra Navnirman Sena’s (MNS) attack on north Indian students who had gone to sit for a railway board exam in Maharastra.




Rape victim wants CBI probe


Statesman News Service
NEW DELHI/KOLKATA, Oct. 24: Two months after she was raped during the communal violence in Orissa, the Catholic nun today came out in public for the first time recounting her traumatic experience and demanding a CBI probe into the incident, charging police with being “friendly” with attackers. With a scarf over most of her face (in photograph), the bespectacled 29-year-old nun accused the Orissa police of failing to protect her. The nun said she was dragged by a mob of 40-50 people, her clothes ripped apart and was raped on a verandah strewn with glass pieces as two of the attackers stood on her hands.
Police probe to continue
Whether the 29-year-old nun “likes it or not”, Orissa Police’s crime branch will continue with its investigations, a top state police officer told The Statesman over the telephone from Bhubaneswar hours after the victim’s Press conference. According to police sources, the only substantive element that remains in the probe so far is the test identification (TI) parade in which police would request the nun to identify the culprits. Besides, police will take a few other steps as part of a process to review the progress made in the probe so far. As part of the process, police will take an opinion from a gynaecology professor in Bhubaneswar to ascertain the medico-legal and forensics aspects of the sexual assault on the nun who, sources said, was recuperating in a “church institution” in Kerala’s Kottayam district where she found shelter after the ghastly incident in Baliguda. A medical examination of the nun in Baliguda on 25 August earlier confirmed that she was sexually assaulted. The second step police intends to take is to perform chemical analysis of the swabs collected from the nun’s person as well as semen and other tests. This would be followed by DNA fingerprinting to establish the culpability of the culprits, some of whom were arrested from Kottayam. “Her statement as well as that of Father Thomas Chellantharayil (who was a witness to the rape) have been recorded and as per the Criminal Procedure Code, we have 120 days to file the chargesheet, which we will,” a senior police officer said.
“In her complaint, the nun alleged that she heard cries of ‘Bajrang Bali ki Jai’,” a source said. She alleged that “40 armed men arrived at our centre on 24 August. Father Chellantharayil and I jumped over the boundary and ran to the nearby forests. The next day we concealed ourselves in the house in Nuagaon, but at 1 p.m. the mob found us and dragged me and Father out. They took me to a deserted building and stripped me. There they raped me. After that, they paraded me without my clothes on the streets.” A police officer said that when the mob tried to pour kerosene on Father Chellantharayil to set him on fire, an assistant sub-inspector and a constable tried to rescue him. “In the process, they lost sight of the nun who was dragged into the NGO complex and raped,” he said.





Expressindia » Story

Nightmare on Dalal St, Mr FM?
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Economy Bureau
Posted: Oct 22, 2008 at 0932 hrs IST

New Delhi, October 22: Just 24 hours after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sought to assuage the nation’s concerns about the global financial crisis, stating that India must be prepared for “a temporary slowdown” even as his government is working to minimise the impact of the crisis, Rajya Sabha’s Question Hour saw a flurry of posers by lawmakers to the finance ministry about the crisis its allied ailments. And more tricky questions are in the offing.
While most of the dozen-odd questions were about the generic impact of the financial crisis that began in the US, a few MPs sharply focused their queries on the nuanced implications of the crisis already seen in India like credit default swaps and forex derivatives--unusual terms for Parliament’s hallowed portals.

The first question about the crisis was listed by JD(U) MP from Begusarai Rajiv Ranjan Singh in the Lok Sabha for October 17, but the House was adjourned in a jiffy. This Friday, Congress MP from Dhule Bapu Hari Chaure has listed a ticklish starred question: whether the Indian government has decided to defer economic reforms in view of the current financial turmoil and if it proposes to reconsider banking, insurance and pension reforms.

While the finance ministry’s response to Chaure would be watched closely, Tuesday saw Congress MP from Andhra Pradesh T Ratna Bai lead the pack with three questions on the crisis, the most evocative one asking the finance minister if “it is a fact that there is a nightmare on Dalal Street”! Ratna Bai also had a starred question on the measures being taken by RBI to augment liquidity and if the outflow of portfolio funds is responsible for aggravating the rupee’s fall in recent months.

Senior BJP MP Najma Heptullah also raised two questions, along with the Samajwadi Party’s Mahendra Mohan, including a starred question that sought to know if forex derivatives losses “may well turn out to be the subprime crisis for India Inc” with potential “market-to-market”(sic) losses for corporates placed at Rs 120-200 billion.

Finance minister P Chidambaram’s reply that “forex derivative losses do not pose any systemic issue” had to be tabled as the House was adjourned. Filmmaker Shyam Benegal, a nominated MP in the Upper House, asked for daily transaction records of FIIs for the first quarter of 2008, as filed by custodians with Sebi and RBI. Benegal displayed his sensitivities by asking the data to be shared “after masking FII identity to ensure that investor privacy is not violated”.

The information Benegal sought was tabled in the House, but the BJP’s SS Ahluwalia’s question on credit default swap transactions was so elaborate that minister of state for finance Pawan Kumar Bansal had to respond with an assurance that the information would be collected and presented to the House. Ahluwalia not only wanted to understand the emergence of CDS and its distinctive features, but also bank-wise and institution-wise data for the last three years and outstanding CDS deals by September.



The CPI’s D Raja had a short and sweet question about the US financial crisis, while Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut wanted clarity on “scams” in private and foreign banks. The Telugu Desam Party’s C Ramachandraiah was as concerned about the Dalal Street nightmare as Ratna Bai. But he wanted clear-cut answers: what is the projected financial burden and loss to both India’s economy and stock market, even how many financial companies will go bankrupt.

The ministry’s response: only 2% of Indians have exposure to stock market losses and, of course, there is no reason for anxiety, as the PM has already stated.
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Nightmare-on-Dalal-St-Mr-FM/376533/

Tongue-biting
- Sensex below 9000 - Rupee falls - Dark clouds in UK
- RBI silence triggers 1000-point explosion
OUR BUREAU

Chidambaram outside Parliament House on Friday. (PTI)
Mumbai, Oct. 24: Carnage, bloodbath, meltdown: investors ran out of epithets to describe the tsunami that engulfed global stock markets, including in India, on Friday.

At the end of a savage day of trading, the sensex tumbled almost 11 per cent to close at a three-year low of 8701.07, the Nifty — the other market bellwether — collapsed by 12.2 per cent, and the rupee plunged to a historic low of 50.15 against the dollar.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the RBI disappointed the markets by refusing to cut interest rates further even as it trimmed the growth forecast for the economy to a range between 7.5 per cent and 8 per cent.

For the sensex, it was the second largest fall in terms of absolute points at 1070.63; on January 21, the index had swooned by 1408 points.

A stream of bad news from the US, the UK, Japan and other countries spooked global markets. The biggest worry was the data that showed that the British economy had shrunk by 0.5 per cent in the third quarter of 2008. This is the first contraction in 16 years and re-ignited fears that the country had gone into recession.

In the US, software giant Microsoft issued a weak outlook while Sony Corporation, the Japanese electronics giant, said it had cut its annual sales and profit forecasts because of poor demand.

The sensex had opened lower at 9535.41 points, taking a cue from weak Asian markets. Stocks were pounded as foreign institutional investors hit the sell button.

In Delhi, finance minister P. Chidambaram tried to soothe markets by saying the authorities were looking to “adopt unconventional or unorthodox measures” and added that the RBI would pump in more money into the financial system if this was required. There was a buzz in the capital that the finance ministry might consider relaxing pricing rules for American and Global Depository Receipts.

“We are being affected by the ripple effects of the global crisis. It is necessary to remain calm and confident so that we can ride out this crisis,” Chidambaram said.

But the markets were tired of words and impatient with the reluctance to take action.

The real trouble for the market began after the RBI announced that it had no intention to trim its interest rates.

The comments of RBI governor D. Subbarao suggested that controlling inflation is still a priority in the run-up to the elections.

“The (RBI’s) focus would be on ensuring price and financial stability, anchoring inflationary expectations and maintaining the growth momentum,” Subbarao told reporters.

“Inflation continues to be a concern at 11 per cent — it is beyond the tolerance level and unacceptable. Despite its downward trend (in recent weeks), we cannot let our guard slip,” he added.

By noon in Mumbai, the selling wave turned into an avalanche with more disturbing news from Europe that the Dow Jones Futures had gone deep into the red, indicating a disastrous start to US markets again.

Analysts said foreign institutional investors (FIIs) were dumping stocks as they started to face redemption pressures. “The FIIs have no option but to sell because of these redemption pressures,” said Manish Sonthalia, vice-president (equity strategy) at Motilal Oswal Securities.

“This is not happening in India alone but across the world. They are scurrying to the safety of US treasury bonds,” he added.

Sonthalia conceded that he had not seen a carnage on this scale in the 15 years that he was associated with the capital markets.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081025/jsp/frontpage/story_10018637.jsp

Nano letter plea
OUR BUREAU
Calcutta, Oct. 24: Representatives of the Nano Bachao Committee today called on Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and asked him to write to Ratan Tata to consider bringing the Nano back to Singur

“The chief minister told us he would shortly write to Ratan Tata with a request to reconsider his decision (to shift the project to Gujarat),” committee president Udyan Das said. “We badly need the Nano plant, we want it back in Singur.”

An eight-member delegation of the committee had earlier met industries secretary Sabyasachi Sen and submitted a memorandum. A fortnight ago, the team had knocked on governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi’s door.

Das said a majority of Singur residents were backing the committee. “Several unwilling farmers, too, have now agreed to accept cheques. Moreover, the youth have come forward to stand by the project.”

The CPM indicated that the government would ask the Tatas to return the acquired land in Singur if they had no immediate plans of starting another automobile project there. Party secretariat member Benoy Konar said the government had received “proposals” from some investors.

Industries minister Nirupam Sen, however, clarified that the government had not taken a decision yet. “We are still discussing the possibilities. It is not yet time to write to the Tatas,” Sen said, indicating that the government would not put pressure on the company before some other deal was cemented.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081025/jsp/bengal/story_10017879.jsp

Terror net scoops up fiery sadhvi
- Woman owner of Malegaon bike bomb
OUR BUREAU

People clear debris after the Malegaon blast. File picture
Oct. 24: A young sadhvi known for bashing up rogue Romeos and flaunting her prowess with the rifle was slapped with murder charges along with two men for last month’s blast in Maharashtra’s Malegaon.

The arrests were made by the Mumbai anti-terrorist squad (ATS) over the past one week from Surat, where the sadhvi, Pragya Singh Thakur, is now based, and from Madhya Pradesh.

Joint commissioner of Mumbai police and ATS chief Hemant Karkare said: “We have arrested Pragya Singh Chandrapal Singh Thakur alias Purna Chetananand Giri, 38, Shivnarain Gopal Singh Kalsaangra, 36, and Shyam Bhawarlal Sahu, 42, for plotting the Malegaon explosions. They have been produced in a Nashik court and we (the police) have their custody till November 3.”

Public prosecutor Ajay Mishra said the trio had been slapped with charges of murder, attempt to murder, criminal conspiracy and promoting enmity between different groups on religious grounds. They were also booked under the explosives act.

The ATS claimed its probe had revealed that RDX was used in the September explosion just ahead of Id. The blast killed five persons.

The remand application mentioned that among other evidence, the police had recorded telephone conversations of up to 400 minutes between Pragya and her co-accused after the blast.

Karkare said Pragya had taken sanyas in 2007 and set up two organisations, the Jai Vande Mataram Janakalyan Samiti and the Rashtriya Janjagran Manch, in Indore.

As evidence of her involvement, the ATS said the LML Freedom motorcycle on which the bomb had been placed was found registered in her name.

The rear portion of the bike was mangled, and the probe showed that the chassis number and the original registration number had been tampered with.

The police were not forthcoming on the evidence against the other two. Sources said Shyam Sahu ran a SIM card shop in Indore.

Pragya’s father C.P. Singh Thakur, 68, an ayurvedic doctor in Surat, scoffed at the “flimsy evidence” and claimed that his daughter had sold the motorcycle but had forgotten to whom and that she did not have any papers to show for that.

“She has been arrested because she could not name the person she sold her motorcycle to,” said Thakur.

Thakur recalled that Pragya, during her college days in Madhya Pradesh, was a prominent, and feared, student leader. She would ride a motorcycle and severely beat up rogue Romeos harassing girls, earning admiration in a male-dominated society.

Pragya is believed to be a former member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the BJP, and the Durga Vahini, the women’s wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. In 2001, she is said to have got herself photographed practising rifle shooting at a camp organised by the Durga Vahini.

The BJP is fighting shy of defending the accused as the party leadership does not want to be clubbed with those who are defending the accused in the Jamianagar encounter.

BJP leader Yashwant Sinha said: “Our only objection is they are being described as Hindu terrorists. CPM leader Brinda Karat called them Hindu terrorists. We have categorically said we don’t link religion with terrorism.”

The Congress is still wary of going ballistic with the issue as it is trying to ascertain Pragya’s credentials as an insider of the ABVP. She is also believed to be a disciple of Swami Avadeshanand Maharaj, who is close to a Union minister and his politician son.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081025/jsp/nation/story_10017900.jsp

Land Acquisition,compensation,disputes and politics !
http://ratandatta.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/09/land-acquisition-compensation-disputes-and-politics.htm

There has been several controversies about the acquisition of the land currently classified as agricultural land. They were all associated with SEZ which UPA Govt. wants,opposed by BJP and LEFT.

The Most high profile and violent cases were Singur ( where land was actually acquired) and Nandigram where one notice was issued. Govt. of West Bengal announced withdrawal of the
idea at drawing board stage after violent agitation with loss of life.

Singur - out of 967 acres or so acquired by Govt, opposition TMC and their leader one and only Mamata Banerjee claimed 400 acres belonged to unwilling farmers and started agitation after forminf some " Samity" s. Reason given was Govt. was snatching away their only means of livelihood for patronizing an Industrialist - Ratan Tata.

The paradox was , it the same Mamata Banerjee who challenged CM -Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on the floor of Assembly to bring Industrialist like Tatas to generate employment, she is the one who opposed and her peace loving workers vandalized Tata Motor show rooms around Kolkata.

The reality whichn was kept under the wrap came out late - this 400 acres of land is supposed to be owned by 2251 farmers who were listed as "unwilling". One need not be post graduate of London School of Economics or even an Economist to tell that all the farners who owned a ver small plot of land, how ever fertile it may be could not sustain
these farmers. Based on best possible income from that land will keep those families as BPL families.

The issues like " Fertile " or "Unfertle" and "fair" and "unfair" compensation often dogged this
projects.Depending on party in power - politics starts which often is far far away from reality , what is good for the people.

People jump in not such after looking into the FACTS but more on account of political leaning, biases ,and hype created by media and activists who need to be on TV to tell that they are working.

I have tried to see the plus and minuses of the different approach and how much is Governments responsible for the fiascos.

Land acquisition for projects - public or private :

Some seem to believe that Govt. can only acquire land for Public enterprises and must not acquire land for Private enterpise.This is counter productive to the views many hold that we need to privatize. The view emanates from the Country's experience of PSU which often was bleeding due to inefficiency, lethargy , corruption and political and Government intergference.

People do not realize that in many places direct purchase of land from thev farmers/owners have several pitfalls -

1. As soon as the News of the project is known, powerful politicians rush to buy the land and then sell to to Business Enterprise at huge profit,making the project unviable or lame from the start. Here the farmers or owners get even less than what they would have got in case of Govt. Acquisition. No one knows about it because the booty is usually shared between politicians of Ruling party/parties and a few from the opposition. Usually there is no conflict when the loot is shared. The greatest example is the loot of PM's package to Vidharbha Farmers - Congress,NCP and BJP, so did any one hear any political rumbling ? Did
Medha Patkar make any noise, It is for us to think before we slam any one.

2. Having seen procurement of 100 acres of land by an MNC for a Research Farm,I have seen who really benefits it is the local politicians through brokers or Village leaders. Final price paid by the MNC was many more times than prevailing rates - extra money was mostly pocketed by people other than the farmers/ owners. Less said is better.

3. Process takes unusually long time. All kinds of road blocks are used by the interest groups to delay and make money.

Let me assure people that it might be prudent to believe a Govt. which has implemented Land Reform Act. almost 100% .No Govt. will ever do that unless the Govt. has concern for poor landless. It is unlikely that the Govt. will be indifferent towards farmers" interest.

Land Acquisition for private Enterprise has always come under attack by oppostion - which is often onenot looking at the farmers' or Villagers' interest but for the sake of oppostion. Excellent examples of such dichotomy can be seen in case of Nuclear Deal-

- BJP who initiated this ,opposed this and voted against along with Left.Nuke deal
was seen as an opportunity to pull down UPA Govt.

- Congress or Congress led Govt.s at the Centre or in States which favours Private
enterprizes and supported land acquisition did mind opposing Singur along with
Mamata Banerjee - a NDA Constituent

Govt. Compensation comes under fire. The biggest hurdle as I see it is " Value of land in the Govt. Land Records. The value is the fixed based on a few recorded transactions. THe value of the land in Govt. record is often low due -

- lack of transaction in the recent past to reflect the appreciation

- cash or black money dealing.

The compensation largely depends on on the value of the land as per Govt.records and Ptovisions of the Act. It is not fair on the part of the opposition and so called Civil Society to blame Govt. or ruling Party that they were not fair. Because -

- because it it is public who keeps the value low by doing cash transaction and
avoid stamp duty but blame Govt. of being unfair when compensation is paid at
value which has been low because people wanted to take unfair benefit.

-land prices shot up due to announcement of the scheme

Politician wants an issue with which they want to prove their existence and relevance. Take the case of Singur.People initially slammed the Govt. for being a Fascist Govt.flouting all Democratic norms. Those who said these -

- did not tell any one what is democracy and what should have been a democratic
procedure.

- It was held legal by Calcutta High Court, It was a full cabinet decision, an
executive decision by an Elected Govt still there was shrill rhetoric of land acquired
being "Undemocratic" - why?

- after Tata Motors started actions suggesting pull out, some said it was not
handled well and in right spirit.Fair compensation should have been given.

Were these fair ? I believe these were said because of the prejudice some people held against CPI(M) and had nothing to do with logic and fairness. These said because political motives parties have supported by people who are influenced by hype opposition and interest groups created. They do not have insight, knowledge and wisdom to decide what is good for farmers and what is not.

Those who are raising the bogey of farmers interest, can they say if those so called fertile land has irriigation, how many crops are grown, what are the crops grown, what is the cost of Cultivation, What is yield or out put , what are the prices so that gross income and net income can be worked out.

Why make a Bandh and blockade and black mail the nation,Govt, local people? Why can't the intellectuals, oppositions approarch Govt. to work out a formula for compensation. I can suggest the following -

a. value of the land as per Govt.valuation and recot=rds

b . a correction factor based general appreciation in that area
and net Income out of the land.

c. a correction for other benefits given

There should be ground rule set by the Civil Society that "Fishing in the troubled water" must be banned.Take the example Medha Patkar's role in Singur and Nandigram- can any one tell why was she there? What has she done for people of West Bengal ? Why was Amar Singh there in Singur ? What has he done for people of West Bengal

I believe we need strong law to prohibit Trouble Mongering and Rumour Mongering to mislead general public. If we need a stronger law to counter Terrorist attacks , we need a strong law to stop this trouble Mongering. It will help in controlling Trouble Mongering in this Country.

UPA Govt. and Some State Govt.s like Govt.of West Bengal is being criticised by opposition and public for Land Acquisition Act. being out dated. No one would ask BJP or TMC who was partner in NDA, why was it not considered out dated then?

I get a feeling that most political parties have been exposed. Their motives have been bared. If people have failed to see it and act,you can't hold any one responsible what is happening today.

Ultimately who is real loser ? It is common people who pay for misdeeds of politicians,interest groups,some activists. It is time for people to wake up and oppose what is going on.

Land acquisition issues stall industrial parks in West Bengal

The disputes have stymied six of the 13 such parks proposed by the state in the past five years

Kolkata: A furore over forced land acquisition, which has halted several major industrial projects in West Bengal, has also slowed six of the 13 industrial parks, involving small and medium enterprises, proposed by the state in the past five years.
Just three of the stalled parks were supposed to generate 20,000 jobs in a state that is trying to revive traditional industries and enterprise. It is unclear how many jobs in all were to be created through the parks.
So far, seven parks involving about 900 acres are operational. The remaining, spread over more than 4,000 acres, are facing problems of land availability, land pricing and other issues, though just one of the parks—an iron and steel park spread over 2,500 acres planned in Guptamoni, 150km from Kolkata—accounts for bulk of the land being sought. ‘The land (cost) has gone up by about three times in many of the places we are scouting for land.’
For instance, a rubber park proposed to be set up at Sankrail, 50km south-west of Kolkata, needed only 170 acres to be up and running. But, three years after it began scouting for land, the company created for the project, South Asia Rubber and Polymers Park Ltd, has been able to acquire only 70 acres of land.
“There has been some resistance to land acquisition,” admits the company’s spokesman. Meanwhile, he estimates that land prices in the area have more than doubled in these three years. Cost escalation and delays in land acquisition have resulted in about 5% of the investors pulling out of the project.
The project, which was expected to be functional by the end of 2007, will have to wait another two years before it is in place, says the official. The investments in the project were expected to be about Rs500 crore.
Similarly, a foundry park which was kicked-off with much fanfare a year-and-a-half ago at Howrah, south-west of Kolkata, has run into land acquisition problems. Only 300 acres of the 924 acres required for the park have been acquired, and even they have not contiguous.
“This is a problem all around,” says a senior official of the West Bengal Industrial Development Corp., who didn’t want to be named. “Land is not available or it is too high priced.”
In Howrah, a hosiery park proposed over 100 acres has run into land availability problems. Another Howrah project, a 150-acre Apparel Export Park also did not make it beyond the drawing board. A 400-acre biotech park, proposed in Kharagpur, 125km from Kolkata, is also being reworked as it infringed on tribal land.
Land availability in the state should not have been an issue given the barren nature of the land. But the current mood, in the wake of the clashes between farmers and the government at Singur and Nandigram, where farmland was being acquired forcibly for industrial and infrastructure projects, which led to violence and protests, has stalled progress all over.
“This land issue could not have come at a more inappropriate time,” says D. Sengupta, managing director, ICICI-West Bengal Infrastructure Development Corp. Ltd.
He points out that the disputes erupted at a time when the local entrepreneurs, who had fled the state, were returning and looking to reinvest in West Bengal. “The land (cost) has gone up by about three times in many of the places we are scouting for land,” says Sengupta, who works with the West Bengal government to look for land and help establish various projects proposed in the state.
“They tell me things will change after May (after the panchayat elections in the state),” says Sengupta.
http://www.livemint.com/2007/12/05230129/Land-acquisition-issues-stall.html?d=1

September 2008
Move Over Kolkata Cadres
by Colum Murphy
Posted September 18, 2008
http://www.feer.com/economics/2008/september/Move-Over-Kolkata-Cadres

This year’s Diwali will be bittersweet for the people of West Bengal. October was supposed to be the month when the first Nano rolled off Tata Motors’ assembly line in Singur, a town of around 20,000 one hour’s drive from Kolkata. But a land dispute has suspended work at the site, raising serious doubts whether the “one-lahk” ($2,500) car will ever see the light of day. Although the dispute is ongoing, already many are drawing important lessons from the Singur fiasco. The conclusion? The communist-led government in Kolkata needs to seriously rethink its role in acquisition of agricultural land for industrial purposes.



The current crisis dates to May 2006 when Tata Motors announced it would set up a plant at Singur that would produce the low-priced Nano. The Mumbai-based automaker had been lured to West Bengal by the state government, which offered the company cheap land, generous loans and massive tax breaks.

The government acquired around 1,000 acres of land for use by Tata and work on the site began at the beginning of 2007. As details of the agreement leaked out, some disgruntled landowners who had sold to the government had a change of heart and demanded that some of the land be returned to them. The dispute came to the boil in recent months and, despite several attempts at negotiations, no lasting agreement has been reached. As of Tuesday, Sept. 16, the situation remained in deadlock. “The suspension of our work at the site continues,” a spokesperson for Tata Motors wrote in an email message.

While the specifics of the Tata Motors case are intriguing, the root of the problem lies deeper. And unless these fundamental reasons are addressed, once and for all, it is likely that West Bengal will continue to experience similar confrontations in the future. If left untreated, the symptoms could get worse, permanently damaging the state’s ability to attract—and keep—economic development projects.

At issue is how land should be acquired from farmers for use by industrialists. At the best of times, this is a trying process throughout India. But it is especially problematic in West Bengal, where communists have ruled for more than three decades. A cornerstone of their policies was land reform. On coming to power, vast amounts of agricultural lands were taken from large, often absentee, landlords and transferred to small farmers. Today, 84% of the land is in their hands, a figure double the national average.

In the future, more land will need to be switched from agricultural use to industrial use if the state is to have any hope of giving jobs to its growing population of young people. Anupam Ray, associate director of KPMG Advisory Services in Kolkata, expects the working population in West Bengal to grow by an additional 20 million between now and 2021. If the contribution made by manufacturing to the economy is not increased from the current 11%, a high rate of unemployment in the future “is not unrealistic,” wrote Mr. Ray in an email message.

Creating a system that facilitates the smooth reallocation of land to accommodate economic development is going to remain a key challenge into the future. So far, the government’s performance has been disastrous.

“Singur is a problem because the government did it,” said Pradeep Gooptu, resident editor at the Business Standard based in Kolkata. “The government should not be messing about with land. Instead, it should leave it to the farmer and the investor to work it out and buy through bilateral deals,” he said via telephone from Kolkata.

Mr. Gooptu said there are several cases in West Bengal where private companies have successfully acquired land from farmers in a manner acceptable to all parties involved. For example, the acquisition of land by JSW Steel and by Indian electronics firm Videocon went smoothly thanks to a proper consultation process between the parties involved and appropriate financial compensation. Mr. Gooptu said the Singur incident has been a “wake up call” for the cadres in Kolkata. “They want to get out” of the land-acquisition process, he said.

Yet 30 years in power means it is unlikely that the government will be willing to remove themselves totally from such an important aspect of economic development. If nothing, Singur should force it to reconsider its role. Perhaps the government could create an appropriate regulatory framework that would allow for the smooth exchange of land between farmers and industrialists. In this way, the government’s role would be that of facilitator, and not as negotiator.

Failure to modify its stance could see only more headaches for the leaders of West Bengal as more and more would-be investors turn their backs and look elsewhere for opportunities less fettered by the hand of government.

Mr. Murphy is deputy editor of the REVIEW.

» 12/14/2005 14:22
INDIA
Church to provide legal aid to the poor
by Nirmala Carvalho
A pre-litigation conciliation programme will be set up in the village of Manoharpur. Legal aid is a necessity; the poor are victims of greedy lawyers, Bishop Lobo told AsiaNews.


Manoharpur (AsiaNews) – With the approval of the Justice Department, a group of Catholic priests is going ahead with a programme to promote pre-litigation conciliation that would avoid expensive legal fees to the poor. The scheme will start in the Manoharpur, a small village in West Bengal, about 160 kilometres from Kolkata.

The Church initiative comes in the wake of the government decision to shelve a pre-litigation conciliation (shalishi) bill in the face of opposition pressure. It will enable people to settle minor issues without going to court.

"Literacy among the poor in rural Bengal is low. Once the people there get embroiled in legal disputes, they lose peace for ever," said Fr Faustine Brank, an attorney who is also co-ordinator of the legal aid unit of the archdiocese of Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta).

According to Fr Brank, villagers wanted the priests to help them get over the never-ending property disputes and frequent disharmony in families.

The priests picked Manoharpur for the project's first run because the people there had first made such a proposal.


Mgr Salvadore Lobo, Bishop of Baruipur in West Bengal, spoke to AsiaNews about the initiative.

"Fr Faustine Brank is a priest of my diocese and a registered lawyer practicing in the Calcutta High Court," Bishop Lobo said.

"As bishop in charge of social services in the diocese of West Bengal, I endorse the programme. Legal assistance is an important and urgent need here. The poor are drained of all their financial resources due to the avarice of the lawyers who unnecessarily drag their cases through lengthy litigation," he explained.

"Here in West Bengal, most of the cases are family matters and land disputes. Settlements can take years and the poor are left destitute without any income," he added. "So the pre-litigation conciliation programme is an important ministry of justice and peace that the Church can offer and from which everyone can benefit."
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Land Reforms in West Bengal
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Geography and demography of the state

Situated in the Eastern Coast of India, bordering the states of Bihar and Orissa and the neighbouring country Bangladesh.
Population density of 904 per square kilometers as compared to the national average of 324.
In 2001, 71.97 per cent of population was in rural areas.
In 1999-2000, 65.9 per cent of household budget was spent on rice consumption.

5. In 1999-2000, 90.62 per cent of total area for cultivation of food grains was under rice.

6. Area under food grains in 1999-2000 was 4.1 times the area under non food grains (cash crops and vegetables)

7. In 1999-2000, 92.6 per cent of total food grains production was in the form of rice.

8. In 2000, from administrative point of view West Bengal had 17 districts divided into 341 development blocks and 3248 cluster of villages having 40,911 villages (called Mouzas).

History of Land Tenure


West Bengal had a land tenure system known as Permanent Settlement which promoted absentee landlords called Zamindars
The revenue collection pressure created a layer of intermediaries
The lowest strata of actual cultivators were the sharecroppers, known mainly as Bargadars
After Independence in 1947, Zamindars were replaced by new landlords called Jotedars


The Jotedars, mainly rentiers from the erstwhile zamindars, again turned out to be not the actual cultivators in general and many of them were also absentees.
The rights of the Bargadars, in spite of various land reforms measures, remained insecure till the late seventies. Most of them were unrecorded, having no hereditary rights of cultivation. The share of crop violated legal stipulations more than often. Threat of eviction always kept the sharecroppers on the defensive.

Leadership, Commitment and Politics of Change

The major movement of Sharecroppers to ensure 2/3rds share of crop was backed by the communists dominated Peasants organization All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS)
The Congress party, which had socialist leanings but basically a centre-left party, ruled since independence and had the backing of the jotedars
The First non-congress communists dominated government was installed in 1967


For the first time, sharecroppers showed some militancy in the rural areas
The present Communist party of India (Marxist) led left front came to power in 1977 general election
In 1977, an amendment to land reforms act made cultivation in absentia an exclusionary clause for eviction of sharecroppers. Sharecroppers were provided heritable rights and the place of crop share was shifted to sharecroppers homestead plot.
In 1978, Registration of names of sharecroppers started in an unprecedented scale under the name “Operation Barga” along with redistribution of ceiling-surplus land.


Who are the major stakeholders in the Land Reform process?

Sharecroppers were the direct beneficiary. By implication the poorer sections of peasantry, namely, marginal and small farmers, benefited the most
Agricultural Labourers, the other major section of the rural poor, were the other beneficiary. They benefited directly from redistribution of confiscated land and indirectly from any wage rate rise.
The major section to lose was the absentee landlords


The major issue in the political economy of reform is whether the target group was correctly chosen?

Data just before independence in 1945, did show that more than 1/3rd of operational area was under sharecropping.
Data also show that percentage of families with primary occupation as agricultural labourers had a continuous decline during the 15 years prior to independence in 1945.
Thus, the decision to concentrate on sharecroppers during post-independence years was politically correct



Number of Bargadars Registered


1.47 Million (64%)


1995


1.43 Million (62%)


1991


1.31 Million (57%)


1984


1.20 Million (52%)


1981


0.25 Million (11%)


Up to 1978 (Pre OB)


Cumulative Nos. Registered (Cumulative % to total)


Year









Share of West Bengal in implementation of distribution of ceiling surplus land among all major rice producing states in India as in March, 2001


States Per cent to National Total

West Bengal 47.14

Andhra Pradesh 9.83

Uttar Pradesh 5.40

Tamil Nadu 2.62


Institutional Innovations and Implementation


1. Bringing Bureaucracy close to the Villages

Replacement of traditional Revenue Court approach to register names of sharecroppers by the Rural Camp Method
Operation Barga was carried out in six stages-
a. Identification of villages with the help of

settlement records and peasants

organisations

b. Squads of Officers from Land Settlement

and Land Management Branch formed



c. Dates of evening camps were settled

d. Government Officials explained the

benefits of registration of names

e. Next day was reserved for claim

verification

f. Government officers recorded names of

the sharecroppers and gave them

certificates. They were entered into the

village records later.

Thus, essentially, quasi property rights were

Bestowed upon registered sharecroppers



2. Delegation of financial and planning activities to Local Elected Government

Local elected government have three tiers, known as ‘Panchayats’
Top tier worked at the district level called Zilla Parishads
The next tier worked at the block level called Panchayat Samitis
The lowest tier worked at the grassroots level of a cluster of small number of villages called Gram Panchayats (GPs)



Quantifiable Tasks of Panchayats

To carry out central government funded schemes like Food for Work (aimed at creating off season jobs) or creation of non-farm rural assets. The major success was in the creation of unsurfaced rural roads and clearing of ponds and tanks.
Distribution of Minikits, a package of seeds, fertiliser and pesticide
Maintenance of tube wells for irrigation through the creation of beneficiaries committees
Non-quantifiable Tasks of Panchayats

Role of conflict resolution in case of disputes regarding land, water and wages, as well as other social problems.


Grass roots Democracy

From 1985 onwards, the panchayats enjoyed financial devolution and planning responsibilities.
Operation Barga created more balance of power in the village democracy
All members of an electoral constituency are supposed to meet twice every year in Gram Sansads to discuss village level plans.
In 2000, there were 3000 Gram Sansads of which almost 90 per cent held meetings.
Percentage of electorates attending meeting had shown a downward trend from 30 percent in 1996 to 5 percent in 2000.


Impact of Land Reforms


Impact on Poverty

Rates of Growth of Rice production


Distribution of Operational Holdings


32.4%


66.46%


Area


78.2%


91.4%


Number


Below 2 hectares


Below 2 hectares


India


West Bengal


Year

Regression Results for Causality for cultivators

Having operational land below 2 hectares


1) Log(yield) = -0.144 + 0.289** log(roads) + 0.359* log(labour) + 0.370*inter 25,

Adjusted R2 = 0.310



2) Log(yield) = 0.142 + 0.313** log(roads) + 0.292** log(labour) + 0.370***inter 20,

Adjusted R2 = 0.248

Note: *, **, and *** refer to significant at 1, 5 and 10 per cent levels respectively


Learning and Experimentation


The strengths

Strong Political will backed by historical support to peasant struggles of the Left parties
Choice of the right target group, namely small scale sharecropping tenants and landless agricultural labourers
Quasi property rights bestowed on the sharecroppers increasing their incentives
Innovative implementation process
Better balance of rural power
Active involvement of local level elected governments in developmental works, especially construction of roads and excavation of canals and Tanks
Conflict resolution by the local level elected representatives
The weaknesses

Land dispossession especially of the redistributed landholders
Insignificant rise of agricultural real wages

The number of cultivators as a proportion of agricultural workers is going down
Poor Attendance in the village level meetings of the panchayats
Questions regarding fairness in electoral process
Indifferent attitude towards financial devolutions and delegation of planning responsibilities to panchayats by the state government
Future Directions

To sustain fruits of land reform, diversification of

production base and increase in non-farm activities

are a must. Along with that, serious thought to be

given on strengthening of grass roots democracy.


The “Special Economic Zone” Debacle of the Left Front in West Bengal

Source : Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review. Its January 2007 issue features the following editorial. — Ed.
In an article entitled “Capital, Technology and Development,”1 Harry Magdoff, refuting the myth of bourgeois social science that capital and technology are the magic which will bring the entire world into the Garden of Eden, wrote:
Since the obstacles to successful capitalist development (in third world countries) are today so gigantic, the pursuit of industrialization inevitably involves the accumulation of capital at the expense of keeping the masses down. Agriculture remains backward, investment is insufficient to cure unemployment in urban and rural areas, and wages are kept at pitifully low levels to provide adequate incentives for entrepreneurs. Production decisions are, and must be, made to satisfy the desires of the middle-and upper-income sectors of the population, those that have the money to buy. The technology introduced is the kind most favored by, and closely tied in with, foreign capital, since this is the technology best suited for profit-making and for squeezing into some of the interstices of foreign trade. Brazil is an outstanding example of what I am referring to. Brazil has been successful in taking a significant step forward in industrialization — one in which native capitalists have actively participated, along with foreign investors from a number of advanced capitalist states. With what consequences? The real wages of the working class have declined and the backward agricultural regions have remained stagnant and poverty-stricken.”
Today, thirty years later, every word rings true for India.
The global counter-revolution of these last thirty years has only added a more vicious aspect. It is only in these last few decades that global trade and capital flows — as a share of world production and savings, respectively — have again risen to the scale of the prior imperialist golden age that preceded the First World War. But this increased transnational dominance of the capitalist market (”globalization”) does not mean that national states — even those not of the imperial center — are becoming obsolete. Rather, ruthless state actions associated with neo-liberalism, policies designed to enhance “competitiveness” and “flexibility,” not just for individual firms but for whole national economies, are required.
In India, the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) policy of the government, formulated in 2000, and brought fully into force in the SEZ act in February 2006, is a clear example of the brutal mobilization of the state for neo-liberal ends. Supposedly based on a Chinese model, in fact the SEZ act goes far further — a complete capitulation to imperial capital. It is sufficient to point out that the supposed Chinese “model” does not permit the sale of land to the corporate SEZ promoters and developers. Until September 2006, the Board of Approvals committee of the Ministry of Commerce had approved 267 SEZ projects all over India. Land area for each of these projects “deemed foreign territories” ranges from 1,000 to 14,000 hectares. Developers of large, multi-product zones with a minimum area of 1,000 hectares are required to utilize only 25 per cent of the SEZ for industrial purpose. The rest can be utilized for residential and shopping purposes, hotels, malls, and the other trappings of “development.” Moreover, the developers have a completely free hand to allocate space and other facilities within the zone on a commercial basis, in short for real estate business.
It is estimated by some experts that in the first phase only, 375,000 acres of land will be required. The well known historian Sumit Sarkar, an author of Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flag — A critique of Hindu Right (Delhi: Orient Longman, 1993), commented that “this is liable to create one of the greatest land grabs in modern Indian history.” India has never before witnessed the coerced transfer of hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land to private industry — and private real estate speculators.
Within the SEZ the trappings of Indian bourgeois democracy fade. The central government’s “Development Commissioner” is delegated the powers of the labor commissioner. All suits of civil cases and even specified criminal offenses that arise in the SEZ shall be tried in special courts. These corporate Guantanamos also offer formidable fiscal “incentives”: exemption from custom duties, central excise duties, service tax, central sales taxes, and securities transaction tax to both the developers and the units; and tax holidays for fifteen years, including one hundred per cent income tax exemption for ten years of the fifteen for SEZ developers.
And at the root of this gigantic theft is the seizure of the land for these global capitalist profit zones from the cultivators through state coercion via the British colonial Land Acquisition Act. Even “consensual” transfers are therefore coerced, since use of the Land Acquisition Act looms behind the shoulder of the governmental “negotiator.”
It should be no surprise then that there has been a great rush to create SEZs in the year since the act was passed.
Into the situation created by this initiative of Chidambaram & Co. the Left Front government of West Bengal has, spectacularly, blundered. Arrogant from a triumph in an election in which it had attempted to project the supposed success of its model of capitalist industrial development, it was blind to the rising anger of the cultivators targeted to be displaced for profit. What followed was the ruthless use of the coercive power of para-military forces, police, cadre, administrative and legal apparatus; all to drive thousands of peasants and share-croppers off a thousand hectares of agricultural land for the benefit of . . . the Tatas. The resulting debacle at Singur saw the worst enemies of the Left Front, the Hindutva fascists and their ally Mamata, posturing in the world media as the friends and leaders of the oppressed. Fortunately, the extra-parliamentary left (and the SUCI) did not permit the fascists to seize this position by default, but damage has been done.
What then is now at stake for the left parliamentary parties of the West Bengal Left Front? Throughout India, Singur-like scenes are brewing. In Maharashtra alone, 70 SEZs will be set up, and 31 of these SEZs will be in the Konkan region alone. Almost everywhere, landholding peasants, along with ryots [subsistence farmers], pattadars [leaseholders], sharecroppers, agricultural workers, and other affected people are preparing for battle to resist land grabbing. Protests are going on in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, in the face of atrocities by the state. In Haryana and Punjab, the farmers are out on the field against the acquisition of multi-cropped fertile land tilled for years. Protests are now spreading to Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Assam. Orissa, which witnessed continuous and brave resistance of the people against indiscriminate land-grabbing by the state government on behalf of foreign and domestic mining corporations for the last few years, is now boiling with new vigor against the projects of POSCO, VEDANTA, Tata Steel, and proposed SEZs. Shall the Left Front parties now stand everywhere before the people of India as the open advocates of the coerced displacement of the agricultural poor in the interests of capitalist profit?
As of now, the Left Front government had “succeeded” in driving the Singur residents off the land and establishing a fenced perimeter defended by armed police. After Singur, a notice of land acquisition for an SEZ project by Salim group of Indonesia (a Suharto-connected crew), to be spread over 10,000 acres, set off protests in Nandigram, East Modnapore. The death of six villagers was reported as clashes broke out. Further West Bengal land acquisition by government for SEZ private profit, in the first phase, has no fewer than 28 projects with total land to be acquired of approximately 105,000 acres, spread across the entire state. How many more such “successes” as Singur can the Left Front survive? To continue on this course is suicidal.
In Nandigram and other targeted communities, cultivators, sharecroppers and agriculture laborers have begun to organize themselves, excluding all cadre of the parliamentary parties. And, indeed, none of the parties has opposed the model of development that the ruling classes have adopted. A new force from below in embryonic form is in the making.
Monthly Review 27(8), 1-11 (1976). »
Mainstream, Vol XLV, No 29
Land Acquisition and Industrialisation in West Bengal : Report of a Workshop
by Arup Kumar Sen
, 7 July 2007


The land acquisition drive of the Left Front Government for promoting industries is at present the most controversial public issue in West Bengal. Recently (on April 20), the Centre for Studies in Social Science, Calcutta, organised a one-day workshop on the topic: Agriculture to Industry: The Problem of Transformation.
In his opening remarks, Sugata Marjit, the present Director of the Centre, made it clear that the “CSSSC has no institutional and official position on the policy of industrialisation as far as the present Left Front Government is concerned”. He also opined that the question of industrialisation should be judged academically, not politically.
Kalyan Sanyal’s deliberation—Industrialisation in West Bengal: Some Inescapable Questions—raised critical questions about the government’s policy of industrialisation. He argued that the rhetoric of industrialisation used in the government campaign has been picked up from undergraduate textbooks of economics. He criticised the government for this casual approach to industrialisation which would displace thousands of people.
Sanyal further stated that agriculture did fairly well in West Bengal upto the mid-1990s in terms of production. After that, the cost of production went up because of withdrawal of subsidies but the prices of agricultural products did not go up. There are indications that for small and marginal farmers land is no longer viable in West Bengal. And a sizeable number of peasants having pattas sold their land in recent years. But, because of land ceiling regulations, small peasants are buying and selling lands among themselves, stated Sanyal.
Sanyal accepted the need for industrialisation in West Bengal, but he expressed his dissatisfac-tion about the government policy. He argued that no calculation has been made by the government about the net employment to be created through its proposed industries. He pointed out that the government talks about the linkage effect of industrialisation, but is silent about the loss of agriculture-related occupations. When asked about the alternative path of industrialisation, Sanyal stated that a sizable number of people have got employment in the non-farm sector in West Bengal in recent times without any government effort. So, one has to know the possibilities of alternative employment. He highlighted the need for a sound compensation policy in case of land acquisition keeping in mind the complexities of land tenure in West Begnal. He cited the case of Singur to show the limits of cash compensation to farmers because loss of land implies loss of source of livelihood and makes life vulnerable.
Surajit C. Mukhopadhyay discussed the interface between politics and economy in his paper—The Politics of Land Acquisition in West Bengal. He stated at the outset that after coming to power in 1977 the Left Front Government took a series of land reform measures within the constitutional framework. The process of land reforms led to politicisation of the peasantry. But, by the mid-1980s, land reforms became stagnant, argued Mukhopadhyay.
Mukhopadhyay revisited the land acquisition question in the context of South Bengal. He argued that South Bengal’s density of population is very high and that led to fragmentation of holdings. Though the fertility of land is high in this part of Bengal, because of rise in input costs peasants just do subsistence farming and do not opt for multiple cropping. Mukhopadhyay claimed that because of the poor state of affairs in agriculture in this region, out-migration to other Indian States in search of livelihood is gaining momentum.
Having interviewed landowners-cum-cultivators in Hooghly, Mukhopadhyay and his team came to the conclusion that 14 per cent of the farmers did not want their next generations, who have education, to pursue farming because cultivation no longer pays. He said that during his teaching career in Burdwan University some years back he also came to know about the dismal conditions of agriculture from students coming from cultivator families.
Though Mukhopadhyay more or less supported the industrialisation venture of the government, he confessed that there is tremendous middle-class pressure on the government and that it has to take care of middle-class aspirations as the representative of a multi-class social formation.



ABHIRUP SARKAR’S paper—Development versus Displacement: Story of Land Acquisitions in West Bengal—was concerned with the associated problems of industrialisation. He argued that the theoretical literature on development economics has largely ignored the problems of land acquisition for industrialisation. He observed in this connection that around one lakh acres of land planned to be acquired by the government for industries represent a small fraction of 14 million acres of cultivated land in West Bengal. So, this will not pose a major problem of food security in the State. He also hinted at the possibility of increasing the average size of landholdings by shifting people to industry on the assumption that the latter will sell their land to the remaining landholders.
Sarkar argued that the government violated property rights during land reforms by confiscating land and transferring land to the landless people. Now, the same government is doing so by transferring land from small farmers to rich investors. In the light of fragmentation of landholding in West Bengal, Sarkar argued that the transaction cost will be very high if the industrialists directly acquire land from the landholders. Ideally speaking, argued Sarkar, the government can ensure fair price for the small farmers who cannot effectively bargain with a powerful buyer.
Sarkar raised the fundamental question as to whether West Bengal being a practising democracy can follow a path of coercion for land acquisition. He categorically stated that the Chinese path of industrialisation is not possible here. In China, land acquisition and industrial growth took place on the basis of secured property rights for investors and loosely defined rights for landowning farmers.
Sarkar argued that in the light of poor conditions of villages in West Bengal and non-profitability of agriculture, there is no alternative to industrialisation. But, he, criticised the government for the failure to develop infrastructure in rural Bengal and emphasised the need for a sound compensation, rehabilitation and resettlement policy. He noted in this context that a cost-benefit analysis of industrialisation is entirely missing in the policy statements of the government. He expressed his reservation about the fact that registered bargadars are getting only 25 per cent of sale proceeds in the land acquisition process whereas they are supposed to get 75 per cent of the produce under the barga system. He concluded by saying that the views of the people, who are losing their land and livelihood, should be given due recognition in the land acquisition policy of the government.
The last session of the workshop was a panel discussion. Alok Mukherjea blamed the West Bengal Government for carrying the land acquisition policy hastily without going through the process of trust-building. Anirban Chattopadhyay pointed the incompetence of the government in properly handling the crisis of agriculture. He suggested that the government had the option of developing cooperatives for the resurrection of agriculture. Gautam Gupta viewed the land acquisition problem to be basically a management problem and criticised the Opposition for politicising the issue for electoral gains. Ratan Khasnobis argued that the cost of transformation initiated by the government is being passed to the weaker sections of the population. Keeping in mind the recent violence connected with land acquisition, Anup Sinha stated categorically that even a single killing is a crime and should be condemned
http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article205.html

1. Overview
Ruled by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), West Bengal continued to witness serious human rights violations especially by the State agencies.On 5 January 2006, Calcutta High Court stated that a “jungle raj” was prevailing in the State. Justice Girish Chandra Gupta while hearing a petition by Samsur Rahaman, a resident of Burdwan, stated “The state police will have to understand the difference between a jungle raj and a civil society. The manner in which police are allowing musclemen to torture law-abiding citizens, it seems we are living in a jungle raj”.[1]
The armed opposition groups, particularly the Naxalites, were also responsible for violations of international humanitarian laws. The Naxalites targeted the activists of the ruling Communist Party of India - Marxist (CPI-M).
According to the estimate of Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), 22 persons were killed in the Naxalite conflict in the State during 2006 which included eight civilians, 10 security personnel and four alleged Naxalites.[2] In June 2006, the State Government announced Rs 50-crore special allocation for underdeveloped rural areas of the State, including the Naxal-hit areas and a separate department for Paschimanchal development was created to expedite the implementation of poverty alleviation programme, but the department did not have its own budget.[3] Hence, it failed to address the situation.[4]
The security forces, particularly the Border Security Forces (BSF) operating along the India-Bangladesh international border in West Bengal, were responsible for serious human rights violations including extrajudicial killings. The BSF personnel allegedly killed Mithun Sarkar (14), son of Nripendra Nath Sarkar, at Harudanga village under Raninagar police station in Murshidabad district on 28 June 2006,[5] Jabiur Hossain at Muslimpur village under Englishbazar police station in Malda district on 20 July 2006,[6] and Musaruddin Molla (17), son of Enamul Molla, near Taltala outpost-1 under Jalangi police station in Murshidabad district on 22 May 2006.[7]
At least three persons were killed in the conflict over the acquisition of 997 acres of land for a proposed Tata Motors small car plant at Singur in Hoogly district to bring “industrial development of the State”[8] without the consent of the affected persons. On 30 November 2006, the West Bengal Government banned gatherings, meetings and processions at Singur.[9] On 2 December 2006, as many as 60 villagers, including women and minor girls, were arrested by the police when they tried to resist the barbed wire fencing of the project site. Many protestors were injured in lathi charge by the police. On 19 December 2006, Chief Minister ordered an inquiry by Central Bureau of Investigation into the alleged rape and murder of Ms Tapasi Malik, a member of the Krishi Jamin Bachao Committee which was spearheading the movement against the Tata Motors project.[10]
By the end of December 2006, posts of six judges were lying vacant in the Calcutta High Court while there was vacancy of 140 judges in the District and Subordinate courts as of 30 September 2006. There was a huge backlog of 2,65,553 cases before the Calcutta High Court while a total of 20,52,038 cases were pending before the District and Subordinate Courts as of 30 September 2006.[11]


2. Human rights violations by the security forces
The security forces were responsible for extrajudicial killings, including in custody, alleged encounters and in indiscriminate firing at protestors.
a. Violations of the right to life
The Border Security Force personnel operating along the India-Bangladesh international border in West Bengal perpetrated serious human rights violations including extrajudicial killings of innocent villagers in the border areas.
On 28 June 2006, a 14-year-old boy identified as Mithun Sarkar, son of Nripendra Nath Sarkar, was allegedly killed by the BSF personnel of Outpost No. 2 of 136 Battalion under Kuthibari Camp at Harudanga village under Raninagar police station in Murshidabad district. The victim was held by the BSF personnel during an anti-cattle smuggling operation in the village. During interrogation, the victim was allegedly tortured and later shot dead on the charges that he was part of the cattle smugglers. On the other hand, the Officer-in-Charge of Raninagar police station, S. Bhattacharjee allegedly refused to lodge a First Investigation Report when approached by the victim's father, Nripendra Nath Sarkar.[12]
The other victims included Jabiur Hossain who was shot dead by a BSF personnel identified as Bishnu Jha at Muslimpur village under Englishbazar police station in Malda district on 20 July 2006,[13] and a 17-year-old boy identified as Musaruddin Molla, son of Enamul Molla, who was allegedly tortured and then shot dead by the BSF personnel near Taltala outpost – 1 under Jalangi police station in Murshidabad district on 22 May 2006.[14]
There were also reports of custodial deaths. On 26 March 2006, Robin Tudu, a schoolteacher, died in the district hospital in North Dinajpur district. He was arrested on 22 February 2006. While an inquiry was ordered into the circumstances of Tudu's death, his wife alleged that he was tortured to death in the lock-up.[15]
b. Arbitrary arrest, illegal detention and torture
Arbitrary arrest, illegal detention and torture were also reported. On the morning of 20 May 2006, BSF personnel allegedly picked up a 10-year-old boy identified as Nazimul Sheikh, son of Nasif Sheikh, a farmer, while he was returning from school and beat him up at their camp at Chapra in Nadia district. The villagers found the boy in an unconscious state in a bush off a road 150 km from Calcutta on the evening of 20 May 2006. The boy, who was a student of Class V, had to be admitted to Chapra block hospital and later shifted to Shaktinagar Hospital after his condition deteriorated. Although Nazimul Sheikh was carrying schoolbooks, the BSF officials claimed that the boy was picked up mistaking him to be son of a cattle smuggler, who was part of a gang of smugglers from whom the BSF personnel had seized a number of cattle. The doctors at Shaktinagar hospital reportedly stated that Nazimul Sheikh suffered both internal and external injuries and his condition was critical.[16]
Many were killed in use of fire-arms. On 12 April 2006, a woman identified as Tulsi Das, daughter of Mr. Sukdeb Das, was reportedly killed on the spot and another seriously injured when Sub-Inspector Kali Prasad Banerjee of Salar police station fired from his service pistol at a mob without warning at Daspara under Salar police station in Murshidabad district.[17]
3. Violations of international humanitarian laws by the AOGs
The armed opposition groups were responsible for violations of international humanitarian laws. On 26 February 2006, four persons – the driver, a helper, a home guard and a constable – were killed and six others were injured when the Naxalites blew up a police van at Naakrachhara in Belpahari in West Midnapore.[18]
The Naxalites targeted alleged police informers. After killing a CPI-M leader identified as Kartick Singh at Lalgar in West Midnapore district on the night of 4 March 2006, the Naxalites reportedly tied Kartick Singh's dead body to a palm tree in the Jhitka forest and left behind a note at the spot which read as “death sentence was awarded to the police agent”.[19]
Similarly, alleged Naxalites killed two workers of the CPM identified as Gumai Tudu and Jaladhar Mahato on the charges of being police informers at Dangardihi area of West Midnapore district on the night of 8 March 2006.[20]
The activists of the ruling CPI-M were specifically targeted. The political party activists killed by the Naxalites included a CPM local committee member identified as Chhoti Mahato at Lalgarh in West Midnapore district on 2 July 2006;[21] CPM activist Anil Mahato and his bodyguard Dinesh Baskey who were dragged out of a bus and shot dead at Joypur in West Midnapore district;[22] and a CPI-M activist identified as Dipak Mahato, who was killed in Birghosa forest near Bhimpur under Salboni Police Station in West Midnapore on 26 December 2006.[23]
4. Violence against women
The National Crime Records Bureau recorded a total of 11,887 cases of violence against women which represent 7.6 per cent of the total cases of violence aganist women in India during 2005. These included 1,686 rape cases, 1,039 kidnapping/abduction cases, 446 dowry death cases etc.
Women continued to faced societal violence. On 6 June 2006, a woman identified as Purnima, wife of Ramashis Rabidas, was reportedly stripped and her hair cut off when she protested against a group of people who were allegedly running a prostitution racket at Idrakpur 30 kilometers from Balurghat, the headquarters of South Dinajpur district. When Ramashis Rabidas went to Purnima's rescue, he was tied to a tree and beaten up. The police arrested three persons identified as Gopal Saha, Bapi Saha and Bani Mondol out of the seven accused named by the victim in her complaint.[24]
The people who were targeted and thrown out of their village on the charges of being practitioners of black magic seldom received protection from the police. On 1 September 2006, 15 members of a family headed by Haridasi Sardar were attacked and drove away from their village under Ranaghat police station in Nadia district at the orders of a witch doctor, who held the family responsible for continued illness of the villagers. The victim family was not allowed to carry anything with them. Homeless and hungry, the family members sought shelter and protection from the officials of the Ranaghat police station but they were driven away by the police officers without arrangement of alternate shelter and protection. On 3 September 2006, the victimised family took shelter outside the Ranaghat block-I development office.[25]
5. Violations of the rights of the Child
Corporal punishment were rampant. In May 2006, an 11-year- old deaf-mute boy identified as Subrata Biswas, son of Judhisthir, was reportedly forced to do 300 sit-ups by the village panchayat chaired by Sambhu Mondal at Kumar village in Nadia district on the charges of attempting to rape a minor girl. The panchayat also imposed a fine of Rs 2,000 on the boy's father, Judhisthir. The boy fainted after the punishment and had to be admitted to Kumar Block Hospital. He was shifted to Shaktinagar district hospital in Krishnagar on the night of 26 May 2006. The village panchayat imposed the penalty without verifying the charges alleged by Bablu Mondol, father of the girl. Earlier, the police had not acted on the complaint lodged by the girl's father against the boy as the charge was neither confirmed by the girl nor the medical report.[26]
Trafficking of children remained a problem. On 16 January 2006, two Nepalese citizens identified as Karan Lama and Naresh Lama, were caught by members of an NGO, Kanchenjungha Udhar Kendra at Naxalbari for their alleged involvement in trafficking of girls from North Bengal and Nepal to Delhi, and handed over to the police of Naxalbari police station. But the police allegedly refused to arrest the traffickers.[27]
6. Violations of the rights of the tribals
The National Crime Records Bureau recorded 12 cases of atrocity against the tribals in the State during 2005, which included seven rape cases, three cases under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act etc.
Apart from hunger and denial of the right to health, housing and other social, economic and cultural rights, the tribal peoples were also victims of cultural cruel practices. They were killed on the charges of practicing “witchcraft” or “black magic”. On the night of 22 March 2006, an elderly tribal couple - Gobindo Soren and wife Chhani – was burnt to death by residents of Kendrapukur village under Habibpur police station in Malda district allegedly for practising witchcraft. The couple was sleeping in their hut which was reportedly set on fire.[28]
On 7 June 2006, a 18-year-old tribal girl, a resident of the Kamlapur tea estate under Phansidewa police station in Darjeeling district, was allegedly gang raped by four unidentified boys at Gulma. Medical tests reportedly confirmed rape. On 9 June 2006, the victim recorded her statement before the magistrate court in Siliguri.[29]
On 20 August 2006, a tribal woman identified as Anchala Pramanick died at Namopara village under Belpahari police station in West Midnapore district after going without any food for almost a week. According to the family members of the deceased, there was nothing to eat in the house and even other members of the family were surviving on water.[30]
7. Violations of the prisoners' rights
Jails in West Bengal were renamed as “Correctional Homes” with effect from 14 April 2000 in order to paint a rosy picture of the state of affairs of the jails in the State. According to the State Government, West Bengal had 19,348 prisoners against the sanctioned capacity of 19,722 prisoners as of December 2005. Of the total prisoners, 74.6% were under-trial prisoners (14,445). The population of female prisoners was 1,598 including 1,048 under-trials.[31]
On 17 March 2006, 52 undertrials incuding 47 activists of Kamtapur Liberation Organisation, four Maoists and one cadre of United Liberation Front of Asom started hunger strike in Jalpaiguri Central Jail demanding, among others, speedy trial of their cases and grant of status of political prisoner.[32]
There were reports of death in judicial custody. On 7 March 2006, Sagar Saha, a convict, allegedly hanged himself from a mango tree in the premises of the Jalpaiguri Central Jail. A suicide note was reportedly found on him.[33]
On the night of 7 August 2006, an under-trial prisoner identified as Dilip Modak of Dinhata jail died at the sub-divisional hospital in Dinhata. The family members of the deceased alleged that he was beaten to death. However, Sub-Divisional Officer of Dinhata Kajal Banerjee stated that the deceased had fallen ill in the jail and was declared “brought dead” at Dinhata sub-divisional hospital. A magisterial inquiry was ordered.[34]
On 26 November 2006, an under-trial prisoner identified as Surya Limbu alias Souden, a Nepali citizen, allegedly hanged himself inside the Siliguri jail. Limbu, son of Kal Bahadur Souden of Jhapa district in Nepal, was arrested on 24 November 2006 for his alleged involvement in a scuffle. The Superintendent of the jail, Sudipta Chakraborty stated that the deceased used his trousers and shirt to hang himself.[35]
8. The conflict at Singur
The Special Economic Zones have been turned into “Special Eviction Zones” with the State Governments allotting prime agricultural lands to manufacture. The conflict in Singur under Hoogly district began over land acquisition for proposed Tata Motors' small car manufacturing project. Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee justified the land acquisition for the Tata project in the name of “industrial development of the State”.[36]
The State Government claimed that most of the land acquired was wasteland. But a report released by a committee of Singur-based organisations investigating the Singur unrest said wasteland constituted less than 60 acres out of 997 acres allocated by the government.[37]
In May 2006, the TATA Motors, an Indian multinational company, proposed to the West Bengal Government for setting up a small vehicles factory in the state and asked the State Government to provide 1000 acres land in Hooghly district, alongside the new Durgapur Expressway and near Kolkata. Desperate to bring in investments, the CPI (M) government accepted the TATA's demand readily without considering the proposal. The State Government acquired 997 acres of farmland in five villages of Gopalnagar, Beraberi, Bajemelia, Khaser Bheri and Singher Bheri in Singur under Hoogly district under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 without consulting the local bodies. Reportedly, less than 27 percent of the 11,000 odd landowners had been willing to give their land while those who had acquiesced were either not living in Singur or had done so fearing coercion by the government and the ruling party. Fearing loss of their fertile farm land, the only source of their livelihood, the farmers who have been permanently residing in these villages spontaneously got together to launch a resistance movement under the banner of ‘Krishijami Raksha Samiti' (Association for the Protection of Agricultural Land).[38]
The Singur area turned into a battlefield. On 7 November 2006, the West Bengal Government started deploying huge contingents of armed police and the Rapid Action Force and setting up camps at several places in the area.[39] On 30 November 2006, the West Bengal Government banned gatherings, meetings and processions at Singur.[40]
On 2 December 2006, as many as 60 villagers, including women and minor girls, were arrested by the police when they tried to resist the barbed wire fencing of the project site. The police resorted to indiscriminate lathicharge, used rubber bullets and shelled tear gas on the villagers, majority of whom comprised of women and children. A large number of villagers were injured, some of them critically and were undergoing treatment.
The conflict gained momentum following the recovery of the burnt body of an 18-year-old girl identified as Tapasi Malik at the site of the proposed Tata car plant on 18 December 2006. The victim was reportedly a member of the Krishi Jamin Bachao Committee which was spearheading a movement against the land acquisition in Singur. Trinamool Congress alleged that the victim was raped and burnt by men guarding the controversial land.[41] Following strong protests, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee ordered a CBI inquiry into the alleged rape and murder of Tapasi Malik on 19 December 2006.[42]
The situation worsened following alleged murder of two other persons identified as Tinkari Dey and his wife Maya whose bodies were recovered from the site of the Tata project on 28 December 2006.[43] By the year's end, the stalemate continued.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1]. HC rap for 'jungle raj' - Burdwan police refuse to accept extortion complaint, The Telegraph, 6 January 2006
[2]. "Naxal Conflict in India", Asian Centre for Human Rights, 10 January 2007
[3]. At gun-point, crores for hungry villages, Telegraph, Kolkata, 24 June 2006
[4]. Buddha's sops to cops fighting Maoists, The Pioneer, 24 June 2006
[5]. UA-225-2006: INDIA: 14-year-old Mithun Sarkar becomes the latest victim of Border Security Forces' killings, Asian Human Rights Commission, 10 July 2006, http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/mainfile.php/2006/1840/
[6]. BSF jawan kills villager, The Telegraph, 21 July 2006
[7]. UA-184-2006: INDIA: Border Security Forces torture then kill a 17-year-old boy, Asian Human Rights Commission, 8 June 2006, http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/mainfile.php/2006/1773/
[8]. Buddhadeb justifies land acquisition for Tata project, The Hindu Business Line, 1 November 2006, http://www.blonnet.com/2006/11/01/stories/2006110102181100.htm
[9]. Bengal Govt bans protests at Singur, The Hindu Business Line, 1 December 2006, http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/12/01/stories/2006120105470100.htm
[10]. CBI to Probe Singur Murder, The Asian Age, 20 December 2006
[11]. Court News, October - December 2006, Supreme Court of India
[12]. UA-225-2006: INDIA: 14-year-old Mithun Sarkar becomes the latest victim of Border Security Forces' killings, Asian Human Rights Commission, 10 July 2006, http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/mainfile.php/2006/1840/
[13]. BSF jawan kills villager, The Telegraph, 21 July 2006
[14]. UA-184-2006: INDIA: Border Security Forces torture then kill a 17-year-old boy, Asian Human Rights Commission, 8 June 2006, http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/mainfile.php/2006/1773/
[15]. Custody death, The Telegraph, 28 March 2006
[16]. BSF beats up 10-year-old, The Telegraph, 23 May 2006
[17]. UA-136-2006: INDIA: Irresponsible firing by Salar police kills a woman and injures a man in Simulia, Murshidabad district, West Bengal, Asian Human Rights Commission, 25 April 2006, http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/mainfile.php/2006/1686/
[18]. Maoists miss target, kill 4, The Telegraph, 27 February 2006, http://www.telegraphindia.com/archives/archive.html
[19]. Maoists kill CPM men in Midnapore, Bankura, The Statesman 6 March 2006
[20]. Maoists in women vendetta, The Telegraph, 10 March 2006
[21]. Murder in Maoist hotbed, The Telegraph, 3 July 2006
[22]. Maoists kill CPI(M) leader in West Bengal, The Times of India, 20 September 2006
[23]. CPI-M activist shot dead by Maoists, life affected in bandh, The Kashmir Times, 28 December 2006
[24]. Woman bears protest brunt, The Telegraph, 9 June 2006
[25]. 'Witch' family thrown out of police station, The Telegraph, 4 September 2006
[26]. Boy sentenced to 300 sit-ups after rape slur, The Telegraph, 29 May 2006
[27]. Cops refuse to arrest 'girl-traffickers', The Telegraph, 20 January 2006
[28]. Tribal duo burnt to death, The Telegraph, 24 March 2006
[29]. 18-yr-old tribal girl raped, The Telegraph, 10 June 2006
[30]. Death after living on water for seven days, The Telegraph, 23 August 2006
[31]. http://www.westbengalprisons.org/rightsprisons.html
[32]. 52 undertrials on fast in Jalpaiguri Central jail, The Sentinel, 20 March 2006
[33]. Suicide puts jail security under scanner, The Telegraph, 8 March 2006
[34]. Undertrial dies in Dinhata jail, The Telegraph, 9 August 2006
[35]. Undertrial hangs self within 24 hours - Second case in two years, first from Nepal, The Telegraph, 27 November 2006
[36]. Buddhadeb justifies land acquisition for Tata project, The Hindu Business Line, 1 November 2006, http://www.blonnet.com/2006/11/01/stories/2006110102181100.htm
[37]. Busted: West Bengal govt's claims, Rediff news, 25 December 2006, http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/dec/25singur.htm
[38]. Atrocities at Singur, India: A matter of rights of the dispossessed, Review: 144/06, Asian Centre for Human Rights, 6 December 2006
[39]. Atrocities at Singur, India: A matter of rights of the dispossessed, Review: 144/06, Asian Centre for Human Rights, 6 December 2006
[40]. Bengal Govt bans protests at Singur, The Hindu Business Line, 1 December 2006, http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/12/01/stories/2006120105470100.htm
[41]. Rape and killing in Singur, The Central Chronicle, 19 December 2006
[42]. CBI to Probe Singur Murder, The Asian Age, 20 December 2006
[43]. In Singur, furore over elderly couple's death, The Indian Express, 29 December 2006

Industrialization of Bengal and A Free Marketeer’s Dilemma: Artha Shastri
Sun, 2008-03-30 00:00
http://www.pragoti.org/node/693
I
Young Jude, the protagonist in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure learns about the perceived “seat of learning” Christminster that it takes that city “—five years to turn a lirruping hobble-de-hoy chap into a solemn preaching man with no corrupt passions”. Five years is not too short a span of time, but in West Bengal these days, we find ample ‘ preaching men’ who have taken a far shorter period to suddenly discover their new role, being played tirelessly in sermonizing the lay-Bengali in general and to the Government in particular, about attitudes that need to be changed, things that need to be done and the words that need to be uttered, when, Industrial houses ‘are eager to do business in Bengal and that too, on a massive scale’.
The points to note here are, firstly, these people were no gawky bunch of hobble-de-hoys before the ongoing process in Bengal gathered steam (while simultaneously effecting their metamorphosis) and secondly, though there is definitely a plethora of relevant issues that need to be sorted out and discussed (or even space for preaching the odd complicated one), a total lack of willingness to engage in any form of informed debates and discussions is reason enough to view such drastic transformation and the sudden new-found concern regarding the ‘plight of the farmer’ -of several writers, painters, film-makers, singers and even Economists through a very critical eye (the basic right of Freedom of speech is not the issue here). In this essay it would be interesting to focus specifically on the last group (some of the Economists), in order to make sense of some of the words that we have heard over from them in the last few months in the context of the ongoing process of Industrialization. For this group in particular, consisting predominantly of ‘Free-Marketeers’ (those who have huge and at times, unquestioned, faith on the virtues of the Free Market) the problem is not about their ‘lack of willingness’ in engaging on issues of relevance, but , primarily, about the timing as well as the content of what they have chosen to deliver under the guise of a sudden and painful realization, especially when this country has already gone through 17 long years of Neo-Liberal Economic Reforms.
After the adoption of the Structural Adjustment Policies (SAP) that the Government of India did in 1991, retreat of the State from almost every sphere of the Economy- be it Agriculture, the Financial Sector or even the Public Sector-became the single most priority of Indian Policymakers, submerged in the romanticism of the market-mythology. Over these years there has been a sharp decline in living standards of the rural-poor all over India, who have faced significant shrinkage in their Purchasing Power abilities. The Agricultural sector is in shambles, public investment in Agriculture has been curtailed and farmers, pressurized immensely by rising input prices, meager commodity prices and debt-burden, committing suicides in large numbers even in the so-called advanced states like AP, Karnataka or Maharashtra (with West Bengal being an welcome exception).The solution to such a series of unfortunate developments in the agrarian sector, according to the bulk of the Free Marketeers has been further ‘opening up’ of that sector to MNCs, on the pretext of ‘modernization’ and establishment of efficient market-networks. The cautious observer of events on this front would only be too aware of the nature of problems that introduction of Contract Farming and the entry of MNCs in the purchase and distributional circuit of Foodgrains have given rise to. Insurance schemes like the NAIS have not worked, since governments, devouted to a systematic reduction of subsidies have not exempted farmers from paying market-determined rates of premium, which mostly have been beyond their reach.
For those even moderately suspicious about the virtues of the Neo-Liberal Economic policies-the facts stated in the previous paragraph may seem to be ones that are well documented and widely recognized. However, for avid Free-Marketeers, these events are nothing more than momentary aberrations on the way of the aforesaid ‘Reforms’ that are, in their opinion the only means to set the prevailing ills right. Regular incidents of mass-suicides by farmers have not been enough to induce them to speak out bemoaning the ‘plight of the farmer’ over all these years, let alone to question the indiscriminate imposition of Neo-Liberal policies on the Agrarian Economy. On a similar vein, for such Economists the process of acquiring land for setting up of industries or the issue of paying compensation in return of acquiring farmland have generally been considered unworthy of much consideration until the issue of land acquisition for the TATA’s small-car project in Singur came up.

The volubility of a few Free Marketeers over the Singur project, that was to later reach new heights when the unrest in Nandigram happened, need to be understood in the context of the long silence that they had maintained all these years when the Agrarian sector in India was, slowly but surely, getting ravaged. While rightly recognizing the fact that acquiring farmland by the amount that has been done in Singur (or for that matter which will be necessary for setting up of an industrial unit anywhere) will have no impact on the overall agricultural production (a ‘concern’ that was raised by the lady who runs the opposition TMC as well as several other ‘intellectuals’ supposedly ‘qualified enough’ to come up with such ‘observations’ regarding the fallouts of ‘Budhhababu’s Industrialization’!) the Free-Marketeer (whose article we are going to refer to below) demanded that the Government must come clean regarding its ‘deal’ with the TATAs, publishing every detail of the compensation package that was on offer in Singur.

In an EPW article titled ‘Development and Displacement; Land Acquisition in West Bengal’ this particular Economist had fished out a calculation to determine whether the compensation paid was indeed enough. In this calculation (i) he compared the price that was paid to the seller of land in compensation with the sum he would have received if he had sold that piece of land on the free market (the compensation amount as he himself observed was higher) and (ii) asked whether the sum received as compensation by the seller of land, if invested in a Bank (since now the earning from his owned piece of land was gone) would guarantee him a decent income vis-à-vis his previous income from agriculture, given the annual market real rate of interest.
Two problems arise in the context of such an analysis. Firstly, the economic condition of the farmer (whether he cultivates his own land, what proportion of his income is derived from Agriculture etc.) whose land has been acquired is not taken into consideration. Secondly, (because the first issue is not considered) it is assumed that whatever sum the seller receives from the sale of his land would NOT be invested in or in the initiation of an alternative non-agricultural activity but would find its way to a bank.
We shall see later why a careful study of the agrarian conditions of Singur is important. It is a different (though by no means unimportant) issue that the landless casual labourers who work on other peoples’ land, for obvious reasons, would receive meager or no compensation to make-up for their displacement. But this group of agricultural workers, in any case, is not generally in a position to access formal banking institutions. In asking a question like (ii) it is then assumed that only those who can access formal financial institutions viz. comparatively well-off landowners (who for the purpose of cultivation lease out land and thus their lands are characterized by absentee-landlordism, as we shall see, the majority of the land in Singur is indeed characterized by and for whom agriculture does not account for the bulk of their incomes) or a section of the sharecroppers, have been taken into account. For the former (who are already dependant on the non-agricultural sector for the bulk of their incomes) if the compensated amount is kept in a bank, their disposable income in the post land-donation scenario would comprise of the (already existing) non-farm income plus the interest earned from the bank, and it is this that needs to be compared to the otherwise farm income from the piece of land donated (which is now lost) and the non-farm income, and not solely to the income from the piece of land.

However, more importantly, if the money received is instead invested in a non-farm activity; the future stream of income from that already-existing/newly initiated activity can get significantly revised upwards thus making the seller of the land better-off in the post-donation scenario. Such a possibility is never recognized in the article, but, assumed that in a post-donation scenario all that the seller will be doing is to depend on the interest earned from his compensation-amount deposited in a bank. This, in fact, undermines the writer’s general support for the Industrialization process- which is expected to usher in development via steering the bulk of land and capital from farm to manufacturing production, in turn raising income levels. (This simple inference is justified in the case of Singur in particular because it is significantly less agricultural compared to several other parts of West Bengal).

This article is particularly interesting with regard to the measures that are prescribed to take care of the woes of the ailing agrarian sector, especially the ‘small and marginal farmers’. The Free Marketeer writes “The other problem, which we have already briefly mentioned, is the absence of an adequate marketing channel for the small and marginal farmers…. these problems could be partly solved by inviting big capital, including multinationals, into the agricultural sector. This could break the feudal chains in which West Bengal agriculture is confined today. Contract farming with big corporations could help the farmers not only by providing them certain and wider markets but also make them aware about new technology, new products and, in general, helping the economy to develop agriculture-based industries. At the same time direct links could be established between the farmers and big retail outlets that could also help them break their dependence on the feudal traders” (bold letters mine).

The advent of MNCs and contract farming (as is evident from the experiences with PepsiCo in Punjab and similar other cases) may liberate the farmers from the fetters of a semi-feudal production relation, but would open before them a Pandora’s Box of newer problems. That the same neo-liberal prescription is advocated to take care of the woes of the farm sector implies lack of recognition of the ground realities and explains, as we have already noted, why these Economists have not been concerned over the fate of the farmer for all these years.

Thus, quite expectedly, in the article’s dealing with the issue of the displaced agricultural labourers precipitated via land acquisition for industry; we find no insight as to how (in the context of the Free Marketeer’s dissatisfaction with the land acquisition process) a more ‘acceptable’ process of land acquisition can be evolved or how can there be a move towards a process of incorporating the landless within the realm of the developments that are expected to ensue from the Industrialization drive. All we find is a blame ‘lack of Rehabilitation and Resettlement policy of the Government of West Bengal’. One time compensation amounts cannot be a problem solver for the woes of the marginal farmer. Promise of granting homestead lands to the landless is naturally very difficult to implement, especially in a state like West Bengal where already the land-man ratio is skewed upwards. Since the whole ‘critique’ is made from within a neo-liberal paradigm, it is not recognized that such displacement of the marginal farmer has been an unfortunate common occurrence through all these years via the very neo-liberal market oriented policies undertaken in the Agrarian sector and through land acquisition.

Demands for the setting up of rural non-farm employment opportunities are extremely important in their own regard, but do not reflect the concerns that an alternative path of Industrialization seeks to address. A genuine concern for the fate of the landless labourer and other agricultural workers must manifest itself in serious attempts at rethinking on ways to impart a position of greater symmetry to these groups vis-à-vis the buyers of land, which is not achievable simply through Government packages or fiat. Neo-liberalism has no qualms with the current arrangement where it is the individual states and not the Industry houses that compete to attract Investments. Financially constrained state governments often tend to stretch their limits in order to attract capital and, as we all know, the Industry houses take advantage of this to squeeze out favourable terms. It is high time that the latter are made to broaden the limits of ‘Corporate Responsibility’ and mechanisms are thought about to distribute the stake of the initial hardships and later fruits of Industrialization over all the parties involved in its processes. This should reach beyond the established notions of ‘Participatory Development’ which emphasizes on the participation and ‘owning’ of a Development process by the local population since, with regard to Industrialization, the Investor must also be made to act upon his obligation to ‘own’ and address the local impacts of the initiative, and not just get reduced to the passivity of carrying out production in the local unit once the land acquisition or the factory set-up process is over [This may be achieved, for example, by tying up the initial acquisition process to promises of further Investments in Social or Physical infrastructure or other productive sectors locally by the Industrial house in question, carried out in co-operation with the local institutions. The task of Economists then becomes one of designing incentive schemes and mechanisms of such co-operation such that the alternative is feasible and implementable]. For state governments operating under fiscal squeeze (a direct fallout of the ‘Fiscal Responsibility’ paradigm) it is impossible to adequately compensate the owner of land, the sharecropper and the large numbers of landless labourers simultaneously, given the present era of rapid Industrialization necessitating substantial and quick acquisitions of land. What our ‘Intellectuals’ need to appreciate is that, until this happens, we cannot deny being a part of such a process, even if we know that with respect to the Capitalists, both the potential sellers of land as well as the Government are in a weaker position to negotiate. It is definitely easier to blame the Government for everything (which the article, ignoring the larger picture, does), rather than to embark on the previous task, which is arduous, but not impossible.

So, what has aroused the Free Marketeers sudden concern for the ‘plight of the farmer’ in the context of their general support of the process of Industrialization in Bengal?

This stems from a dilemma. On one hand, Industrialization [irrespective of the context in which we view it- be it the non-viability of agriculture a’la rising input costs etc. or the logical next step towards development with opportunities in the farm sector naturally exhausted] is the only path forward to raise income levels of the masses and so is to be supported. On the other hand, since the process is occurring in a state ruled by the Left- a political force whose ideology and Economic policies are at poles apart vis-à-vis Neo-liberalism, the policies implemented in Bengal need to be projected as ones that are uniquely regressive and the ‘plight of the farmer’ needs to be urgently reinvented! A manifestation of this lies in the observation that when Free Marketeers and the media (which also steadfastly adheres to the same Neo-liberal ideology) ‘discuss’ the Industrial progress of a state like Gujarat, figures of Investment amounts flowing in are consistently highlighted ignoring existing shortcomings (we have not heard much concern about displacement of marginal farmers ensuing from the Development process in Gujarat from mainstream theorists) , while in ‘discussing’ the same process in Bengal, the yardstick gets altered in that the minutest shortcoming is never ignored and the positives often suppressed.

The point thus is- it has been beyond the scope of Free-Marketeers to effectively address mechanisms of Reform that can take care of the problems of the marginal farmers (over which the Free Marketeers are now claiming to lose their sleep) because even in the process of criticizing a Policy keeping in mind the above group, they can at best come up with ‘the lack of connectivity to the market’ as the prime raison-de-etre for all ills and refuse to acknowledge the glaring limitations of a Neo-liberal scheme by blaming all its shortcomings on ‘government inefficiency’, which indeed constitutes a safe criticism consistent with the market ideology.

No wonder that the few attempts which have so far been made to address the issues outlined above have been carried out by non-mainstream theorists. Throughout the 90s and uptill now it has been Economists from the Left who have time and again cautioned us against the adversities that blind adherence to Neo-liberalism may entail. It is not with glee, but grief that we find that most of those predictions, (be it acute agrarian distress, rising inequalities and so on) once branded as ‘arising out of populist sentiments’, have come true! Thanks to the media, there is little recognition of this!

*

Sudden new-found concerns for the ‘plight of the farmer’ being one resultant phenomenon of the dilemma that we had earlier talked about, there is another channel through which the dilemma and the lack of proper recognition of the compulsions of a State Government operating in a Neo-liberal milieu has played itself out.

The media, Free Marketeers, Opposition Parties all have tended to interpret the “industrialization of Bengal” as a process that ‘proves’ that the Left has shunned its path towards the establishment of Socialism and embraced Capitalism. This is a deliberately constructed propaganda, framed without being the least under the impression that such an ideological shift has actually taken place.

Such propaganda is primarily aimed at those who recognize themselves with the Left ideology. It desires to create a sense of confusion in its ranks and inject a question mark in the mind of the Leftist worker regarding the path that is being followed, all very consistent with ‘There Is No Alternative’ to Neo-liberalism adage.

Ever since the land acquisition process in Singur began one-liners like ‘Left and right switch roles, the strange case of Singur’ came up. As Nandigram happened, as the Left increased its pressure on the UPA over the Nuclear deal with the USA, as the Left persisted in regularly questioning the rationale behind Neo-Liberal Economic policies and as one ally of the Left Front in Bengal became increasingly restive, the propaganda machine started to run extra time. Jyoti Basu’s comments at a huge rally in Kolkata were misinterpreted and a hedge between the CPI (M) and the rest of the Left parties was sought to be created. All this so as to increasingly project the CPI(M) as an ‘arrogant’ ally that wants to hijack the Left agenda and hijack it away from the ‘path of socialism’. Thus by weakening the Left all challenges to the free-run of Neo-liberalism was sought to be crushed.

An excellent article by Professor Prabhat Patnaik titled ‘The Communists and the building of Capitalism’ has effectively exposed the crudity and hollowness of such propaganda.

II

The article ‘Development and Displacement’ ends with the allegation that the unrest in Singur is a result of the protest against China-type ‘coercion’ by the Left Front! About the rulers of Bengal the Free Marketeer is of the opinion that ‘Being brought up in the Leftist tradition of thinking, they are not too scrupulous about the methods they take to achieve their goals’ and reminds the Left that there is Democracy in India and hence such ‘coercion’ is ‘untenable’ . Since this conclusion is not arrived at through a careful study of the local conditions in Singur it does not merit serious consideration. We do not attempt to discuss the land acquisition process in this article either, but it would be interesting to take note of Mritiyunjoy Mohanty (MM)’s work on the same subject in which he has based his conclusions on meticulous study of the local economy of Singur and hence is of much more academic relevance.

From available statistical evidence what can be inferred about the agrarian economy of Singur? “..sustained agricultural growth in the overall context of diversification away from agriculture has produced a differentiated peasantry – a large number of small land-owning households where income and employment from agriculture now constitutes a small proportion of total household income and employment; and a smaller set of relatively larger landowners and tenant farmers who use the land lease market to expand agricultural operations, allowing them not only to grow but to accumulate as well.”

Since for bulk of the title-holders on land agriculture is no longer the main source of income, most of the land donations (75 percent according to MM) have been voluntary. But since “... there is an emergent rural bourgeoisie, accounting for a small proportion of the title holders but a significant proportion of the land acquired, whose economic interests (as in profit and accumulation) have probably been adversely affected by the acquisition. What evidence there is would suggest that it is from this group that the fairly vehement resistance has come and what consent (for land sale) there is has in all likelihood been non-voluntary”. This rural bourgeoisie who have resisted not because their livelihoods are at stake, but to protect their interests have organized themselves under the banner of the Krishi Jami Raksha Committee (KJRC) supported by the TMC. In other words the TMC has taken the sides of those (the rent-seeking segments) who have traditionally constituted its support base, but do those singers and writers who have aligned with the TMC citing its leader as Sarbaharar Netri (leader of the Have-nots!) realize this?

MM’s work is not devoid of criticism of the state Government, but it is constructive criticism. The same cannot be said about 90 percent of all ‘criticisms’ which have been targeted against the same in West Bengal. For example, let us consider what our Free Marketeer chose to deliver in India Today over the unfortunate occurrences in Nandigram. After branding the State Government as ‘Fascist’ he writes “If we look at China, the entire East Asia, or Mussolini’s Italy or Franco’s Spain, a high level of economic growth took place during such regimes. Under a Fascist regime you cannot raise your voice, and that helps the Investors’. Simply amazing! One with even a minimum knowledge of history will wonder how China compares with the regimes of Mussolini and Franco with respect to Fascistic tendencies! Or, as to how Nandigram invokes in the mind of a knowledgeable person the memories of Italy or Spain during the Second World War! What is the definition of ‘Fascism’ in use here?

More importantly, as we have already noted several times, it is monumental hypocrisy on the part of an Economist to suddenly raise a hue and cry ‘you cannot raise your voice’ when (i) he and his ilk had chosen not to raise their voices all these years when the miseries of thousands of farmers consistently failed to move our policymakers forcing the former to choose the path of death (Infact we have consistently heard over from the latter as to why ‘agricultural subsidies need to be reduced’ to make the system more ‘efficient’!) and (ii) thousands of Left supporters were driven away from their homes for eleven long months with utter lawlessness prevailing in Nandigram, thanks to the BUPC-TMC-Maoists, after it was the latter combination that deliberately chose the path of violence by rejecting repeated calls for negotiations from the Government ! And when the Free Marketeer has finally decided to ‘raise his voice’ all he can prescribe, through the EPW article, is the same old prescription of Corporate penetration of agriculture , the same Corporate houses whom he blames for financing the terror in Nandigram- “Where did (the money) come from? I don’t have any solid evidence but most likely it came from the business people. Business men always want to be close to the government for their own reasons’! One wonders as to why businessmen would finance the buying of armaments by the CPI (M) supporters in a scenario when the Chief Minister had announced on March 15th itself that no land would be acquired in the area for a chemical hub. This critical comment aimed at the ‘businessmen’ thus should not be construed as a recognition of the ominous influence that the Corporate Sector now wields, but as an attempt to ‘infer’ the ‘evil influence’ that Politics can have on the market forces. This would be clear if we go through some of the columns that this the Free Marketeer has written over the past few months.


*
The bulk of the newly emerged preachers were given a common platform to propagate their preaching by the AnandaBazar Patrika after it initially had labeled the group as ‘Sushil Samaj’ (A society consisting of the quintessential Good Guys- sushils, as opposed to those portions of the society that adheres to the any form of political ideology, and hence extrapolating the ABP’s concept, must be the ‘duhshils’- the Bad Guys!). It is another story how and why the ABP was later to rechristen them as ‘Nagarik Samaj’, but the projection of Politics, and particularly Left Politics, as something that is totally undesirable and anti-progress has been the ABP’s single most important agenda, of which the ‘Sushil’ or ‘Nagarik Samaj’ is the latest expression.
But for the ABP unease set in when several members of this group extended their tirade against the Left to the realm of active opposition to the process of Industrialization. Our Free Marketeer was then called to duty in order to emphasize that it is the Left that needs to change, not the Capitalists! Whatever was written about ‘Businessmen’ in India Today was conveniently forgotten and on page 4 appeared the sermon Bangali’ke Bujhte habe Pujipati’ra shatru nay [Bengalis have to understand that Capitalists are not our Enemies]! (ABP January 17th, 2008). The article also stemmed from a suspicion which the ABP harboured about the mentalities of a few members of the ‘Sushil Samaj’, (especially those who were earlier supporters of the Government) that they may not have parted entirely with their Leftist sympathies just by crossing over to the ‘Sushil’ camp (though in writing, the ‘Bangajanata’ or the general people of Bengal were generally noted to be hostile to Capitalists). In this article, the Free Marketeer amply demonstrates the level of his understanding of Fascism by drawing frequent parallels of the Nandigram incident (terming it as ‘genocide’) with Gujarat riots and comparing the Chief Minister with Narendra Modi. The Chief Minister was then urged (consistent with the ABP’s line of viewing the Chief Minister as an entity independent of the party Ideology) to change the above ‘mentality’ of Bengalis (read Leftists), supposedly by going against the party ideology!
The list of sermons in ABP’s Neo-liberal gospel runs long and it is beyond the scope of this article to consider even a few of them. But let us take note of another interesting one that appeared on the 6th of February 2008, written again by the same academician with the heading Madhyabitter unnati hale tarai garibder tene tulbe [ Once the Middle Classes are (Economically) well-off, they themselves will lift the poor up (from Economic Misery)]! There exists some sensible observations in this article regarding the general fallouts of Industrialization, but the headline and the tone seems to convey that once
the middle-income classes achieve a certain level of prosperity they would automatically devout themselves to the ‘sacred duty’ of upliftment of those below them. No need for political organizations or movements to create consciousness in the minds of the disadvantaged about their rights in a society where class and caste divisions run deep! Needless to say, it has never happened that way. Neo-liberalism, by constantly playing up a strict dichotomy between the realm of ‘Development’ and ‘Politics’, wants us to forget that it never happened that way!
The ‘Sushil Samaj’ experiment of the ABP is now on the wane. The false propaganda of the ‘CPI (M) turning Capitalist’ has not been able to make much dent into Left-Unity. But this, along with the Nandigram issue will be trumpeted tirelessly, sermons will flow with volumes rising up to the elections, which would keep the faith in the hearts of the Left-haters alive. More crocodile tears will be shed over the ‘plight of the farmer’. While all these happen the Left has to live up to its tradition of leading nationwide struggles for alternatives to the Neo-Liberal agenda, which it has been tirelessly doing over years. In West Bengal there is already talk of granting ownership of land to the Bargadars and involving the Panchayats in local Industrialization efforts. These are encouraging developments which need to be extended and sustained. Only the Left can sustain these initiatives since it is the only political force in this country which possesses the perspective, will and expertise necessary to ultimately succeed in these struggles.
Notes and References;
1. Sarkar Abhirup “Development and Displacement; Land Acquisition in West Bengal’. EPW, April 2007.
2. No one can deny the Importance of the establishment of proper market connections for the farmer. But there are more fundamental problems facing them today, like lack of Government support (again the direct fallout of implementation of the Narasimham Committee report in the post-1991 era that led to the closure of a large numbers of rural bank branches) necessitating a dependence on rural moneylenders or dishonest input dealers, interlocking of markets and so on. To ignore all these and to harp always on ‘lack of market networks’ can achieve nothing.
3. Reading the article one feels that many of the observations made about rural West Bengal are unique to the State, which, however, is not the case. Even during the brief period of unrest a few months back in certain areas of West Bengal over the Public distribution system, this academician had attributed it as a protest against the state of public distribution system in West Bengal ignoring once again the all-India scenario! He should know that Kerala and West Bengal are the two states where the PDS has worked well despite all the efforts of the Centre to subvert it.
4. Mohanty M., Singur and the Political Economy of Structural Change, IIM Calcutta Working Paper series no. 601, February, 2007.
5. Sarkar Abhirup ‘The rage of Fascism’, India Today, November 2007.
____________________________________________________
West Bengal
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Comments
by Critical Kali (not verified) on Mon, 2008-03-31 00:00
I really don't understand why more than 30% of the peasants in Singur are still not ready to take the compensation offered by the state government ? Though our honourable Chief minister long back said there is no opposition to land acquisition (it is the handiwork of some consipirators) and more than 90% of the land owners have given their consent to Tata's project. More over the chief minister has said that there will be work for 12000 hands. These people should take the compensation and join the workforce.
2) The venerable economist says, "On one hand, Industrialization [irrespective of the context in which we view it- be it the non-viability of agriculture a’la rising input costs etc. or the logical next step towards development with opportunities in the farm sector naturally exhausted] is the only path forward to raise income levels of the masses and so is to be supported...,"
Really !!! Marx once said, "Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!" Accumulation is nothing but industrialisation for the bourgeoisie. Certainly during the process of industrialisation, some (executives, technicians and managers)enjoy higher living standards (though the spectrum remains unequal) as it has happened in the post liberalisation Indian economy but for the rest (majority) it is misery, deprivation and poverty. How many people in and around Singur will derive the benefits of income generation from the car factory in Singur, only few. For the casual labourers, road side vendors and canteen workers trickle down affect will create some income but that happens across India where ever Industrialisation is taking place -: Montek-Chidambaram economics. For the rest like the labourers who are working to raise the factory wall the story will be no different whether the small car comes out or not from the factory. And please keep in mind the amount of subsidy-the tax payers money - the state government has to provide in the next ten years for the project which includes tax rebate, land price subsidy etc.
Sorry we have to keep in mind that the parliamentary left confined within a state boundary can't do more than this.
3) How MM can be so naive about history ? Who said China is a fascist state ? One should know the facts. It is a one party state where there is no sushil samaj, ABP and uncensored Internet politcal and dating sites to create disturbance. If the US is the country which has the distinction of having the highest number of prisoners, China last year carried out the highest number of capital punishment. Also number of times it has supported autocratic rulers and states (General Yahya Khan during Bangladesh liberation movement)and now the Sudanese government in Darfur.
reply Tata Group’s security up after threats from Maoists
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Kartyk Venkatraman
Posted: Oct 25, 2008 at 0341 hrs IST
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Kolkata, October 24 The police have decided to upgrade security at the offices of Tata Group in the city after Maoist leaflets urging stepped-up agitation against the land acquisition for Tata projects have been recovered.
The leaflets were received on October 17, after some English and vernacular dailies carried an open letter from Ratan Tata detailing his reasons for shifting the Nano project from Singur.
Though senior police officers preferred to deny the issue, sources in the Special Branch said the police apprehend sudden and possibly violent demonstrations at Tata business establishments by Maoist sympathisers.
The leaflets in Bengali and English, signed by a CPI-ML spokesperson for eastern India, who identified himself as Comrade Surya, state: “We shall expose and smash all conspiracies being hatched by the Tata-Buddhadeb gang. Tata has justified land acquisition, lied about transparency in the acquisition of land in Singur, made false charges of theft of goods from the Tata Motors factory and shed crocodile tears for the people of Singur. However, he skipped important issues like the merciless repression in Singur, forcing people to part with their plots”.
Tata, it said, has come out in the open most vocally in defence of the CPM’s development policy.
“Ratan Tata, alongwith Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Benoy Konar, Prakash Karat & Co have steamrolled over the lives of thousands of Singur peasants and nearly 1,000 acres of highly fertile land,” the leaflet said. “Tata wants to be a self-proclaimed teacher of the people, sermonising them not to struggle but to fall in the CPM’s policy of destructive development.”
When contacted, Deputy Commissioner (Special Branch) Parthasarathi Ghosh refused to comment on the issue.
Inspector General (Law & Order) Raj Kanojia said the Maoist leaflet has not been brought to his notice as yet. “We will take adequate steps as and when the need arises. Outside Kolkata, the Tatas have so many establishments. Probably the leaflet was intended for Kolkata Police.”
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/tata-groups-security-up-after-threats-from-maoists/377802/
Land panel for more power to states
Parliamentary committee on land acquisition submits report
BS Reporter / New Delhi October 22, 2008, 0:39 IST


Wants states to acquire all the land needed for industrial projects.


After extensive deliberations for over 11 months with several interest groups, a parliamentary panel today delivered its report on the rehabilitation and resettlement policy and amendments to the Land Acquisition Act advocating more power to states in these matters.
However, the states may have to wait for at least another two months as the UPA government has virtually no time to table these proposals in the current session of Parliament. The government is planning to adjourn the ongoing session after this week and call a fresh session in December.
The panel has rejected the government’s most important proposed amendment, on the state’s role in land acquisition. The Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill, 2007, moots that a state can acquire up to 30 per cent of the land required if the private player has been able to buy the rest. The Standing Committee on Rural Development has suggested that, if required, the states can acquire the total land required.
The UPA government is, however, likely to stick to the 70:30 formula. Union Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh told Business Standard, “We have to examine the report. But it is not necessary that all recommendations of the standing committee have to be accepted.” Singh had earlier sought an even smaller cap for the states (only up to 10 per cent acquisition).
Top ministers privately say it is the states that have caused most of the problems surrounding land acquisition for industry and this tendency has to be curbed.
The report has also sought to expand the definition of “public purposes” to include states’ role in setting up private industries. “There are some industries which serve public purposes by their economic activities. States should acquire land for them,” Hannan Mollah, a prominent member of the committee, told Business Standard.
However, the committee has a different view. “If they have got a piece of land to build a hospital or a school, they can’t come later and say they want to build a shopping complex on the surplus land. In that case they have to return the land,” said Kalyan Singh, the chairman of the committee.
Suggesting more power to the states, the committee said the option of using farm land for industrialisation should be left to the states. “While it is desirable that farm land should not be used for industry, states like Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar have very little non-agricultural land. Any blanket ban will mean these states can’t have industries,” Tarit Topdar, another member of the committee, suggested.
The question of compensating the farmer with alternative land has also been left to the states. “It is not feasible to provide alternative land in all the states. And giving alternative land means someone else will lose his land,” Mollah said.
The committee has also recommended that the highest price of sale deed in the last three years plus 50 per cent of the said highest price should be the used to assess the market value of the land.
http://www.business-standard.com/india/storypage.php?autono=338019
Land acquisition delay hits Diamond Harbour container terminal project
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Express News Service
Posted: Oct 18, 2008 at 0217 hrs IST
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Kolkata, October 17 More than 10 months have passed since the shipping ministry decided to accept Capt Mohan Committee’s recommendation for a dedicated container terminal at the Diamond Harbour dock in South 24 Parganas. But work at the proposed site is yet to see the light of the day due to continued delay in land acquisition.
Under the project, Kolkata Port Trust (KoPT) is planning to build four jetties to explore the deep-drafted facilities in the south of the state. Of the 125 acres land proposed for the project, about 30 per cent land is under the Ministry of Defence. According to reports, while about 57 acres of land will come from the state government and about 40 acres is private property, the rest of the land belongs to the Ministry of Defence. It is now examining the proposal before it hands over the land to KoPT.
“The state government has agreed in principle to go for land acquisition for us, and the district administration will do the land acquisition for the project,” said A K Chanda, KoPT Chairman. There seems to be no initiative on the administration’s part to acquire land for the project.
The request for qualification (RFQ) for the project was to be shortlisted in July, but it is yet to take place. RFQ is a process by which prospective bidders are shortlisted for the contract. “The RFQ will only be floated once all the necessary clearances are obtained,” said Chanda.
Since the last three years, the port had maintained second position in cargo handling. In 2007-08, however, the KoPT handled 57.329 million tonnes of cargo and slipped to the third position.
Diamond Harbour, situated about 50 km from the city, provides a draft of 9 metres, which is more than any other riverine port in the state. The officials of the KoPT say there has been no instance of dredging at the dock since the last 15 years. KoPT officials feel due to the silting of the riverbed, the vessels at the Kolkata and Haldia ports are carrying less capacity than what they can carry, and hence, the new facility proposed to be built at Diamond Harbour, will make cargo handling easier.
The cost that will be incurred for building the port is estimated to be Rs 1,235 crore. Earlier, it was decided that the port will have the facility of both cargo and container handling. As per the recommendations of the high-powered committee, the project was revised and the new facility will be dedicated only to container handling.
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/land-acquisition-delay-hits-diamond-harbour-container-terminal-project/374939/
Dr D Subbarao: Steering India through financial crisis
Published on Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 15:46 , Updated at Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 18:19
Source : CNBC-TV18

Reserve Bank Governor D Subbarao said the inflation forecast has not lowered on high Consumer Price Index. “Crude prices may not fall even if the dollar falls or OPEC cuts output. The kharif output will be lower-than-expected.”

Earlier today, Subbarao told NewsWire18 that the repo rate cut was directed to infuse confidence in the market. “The Credit Policy has to be co-ordinated to serve the macro environment.”

He believes India’s GDP, or gross domestic product, growth slowdown may continue till FY10 if global uncertainty continues. “Our best estimate for FY09 GDP growth is 7.5-8%.” The Governor assured that RBI will iron out any liquidity issue faced by banks and is ready to infuse or withdraw liquidity as per situation. He said inflation is coming down and hopes this trend will continue.

Here is a verbatim transcript of the exclusive interview with Dr D Subbarao to CNBC-TV18's Latha Venkatesh. Also see the accompanying video.

Q: There has been a virtual assault on emerging market currencies, some of them touching all-time or near decade lows. Is this problem something worse than the Asian crisis, how is RBI approaching this sudden deepening of global crisis?

A: We have noted currency movements around the world, and are studying the transmission of the problem, which originated in the US housing market, to Europe first and then to the rest of the world. It is paradoxical that a problem that started quintessentially and a non-tradable sector like housing has snowballed into a crisis of disproportion.

We are watching the movements of other currencies and are watching the movement of the rupee. Our policy has been that the rupee value will be determined by the process of demand and supply and we are trying to manage volatility, and that’s what we plan to continue to do.

Q: Do you think this issue will now reach the proportions that it reached in Europe? Will coordination among Asian central bank be required? Already some moves have been made. Some of these Asian countries have tried to set-up an USD 80 billion fund. Have you been approached or even as a person looking at this problem as one of its players, do you think that will be the next step or that will be required?


A: Yes, coordination is always helpful. It adds value especially in uncertain and crisis times like this. We also have to be conscious of the fact that integration which is there across G7 and advanced countries is much more in terms of quality and depth of that integration as compared to the integration in Asian economies. India is more integrated than what it was 10-years ago at the time of the Asian crisis, but we still have some controls. The prudent management of our capital or current account has stood us in good stead at a time like this.



Q: You haven’t really been approached by central banks just yet?



A: As I have said in the press conference yesterday, some central banks in Asia and indeed the US Treasury as well have extended the courtesy of telling us before they have taken certain moves. But so far we have not heard from other central banks about our coordination as an institutional forum for coordination.



Q: No second thoughts about how this unraveling or sudden worsening of the crisis might impact the real sector in India. Would you still go with 7.5-8% that you had forecasted in your Policy?



A: That 7.5% to 8% was 48 hours ago. These are rapid developments. More important than putting numbers on this is to be reacting and responding and being ahead of the curve. That’s what we are planning to do. We did an estimate and it is helpful for us to disseminate to the broader audience about what we think but it is not as if we do estimate every day.



Q: The rapidity of the events is taking us all by surprise although there could be some problems with that achieving of estimates.



A: There are daily and systemic things. We are watching all of them and responding to them on a daily and continuous basis. We will keep track of our estimates and revise them as appropriately. It’s not as we can come out with a revise number every day as you know.



Q: Coming back to growth estimates, the worry seems to be in the subsequent year FY10 because for much of this year people are provided for in terms of capex plans or for working capital. I know we don’t have adequate data and I admit that global events are spinning fast out of control but how would you estimate FY10, how bad can it get when you look at it from the data available?



A: The answer is in your question itself, because there is a lot of uncertainty about the global situation. People are talking about the depth of this recession and the length of recovery. A lot will depend on that. The drivers of growth in India have been domestic consumption and domestic investment. Last year, the current account deficit was only 1.5% of GDP and its up slightly this year but it is still small compared to the economy. However, even as foreign savings are small, we will be impacted through several other channels. We will be impacted because of exports by credit flows, equity flows, investment flows etc. So now, I am unable to take a call especially on a public forum about a precise number or the extent of downturn but will continue to have an impact on us.



Q: Were you categorical that it will be somewhat higher in the current year? Any estimates with RBI about the balance of payments, would that slip into deficits?



A: I believe not. We stand by what we said in our statement yesterday, which is that the capital flows will meet current account deficits.



Q: The market’s disappointment was not so much with the RBI not giving rate cuts. But inflation in July, when the estimate of 7% for March-end was given, all the major commodities were at least about 50% higher, and there has been a seminal fall in the last one quarter, you still think that you can’t revise that figure available data lower?



A: The RBI takes into account not just the WPI number, (wholesale price index) but a number of other inflation indices too. For example we have four indices, the CPI for agriculture and rural is 11%. There is uncertainty about a number of principal commodities. Let’s take agriculture, production for Kharif this year, despite the good rainfall, is estimated to be 115 million tonnes, less than 125 million tonnes last year. Prices may not soften all that much, because agriculture input prices have gone up. Oil is falling and could fall further if inflation can go high and recession is deeper. On the other hand, if there is production cut or if the dollar weakens there would be upward pressure. We have done our estimates taking into account the trends, the variables as they are evolving and thus, 7% is our estimate.



Q: With a downward bias?



A: I would think so, and in a mathematical sense, inflation is coming down and people look at the baseline and say that ‘if this trend continues it must come down’.



Q: There is fragility about the confidence in the markets and yet the broad tone of your address was a bit hawkish, but certainly neutral. Was it a conscious policy not to sound as a cheerleader to try and encourage growth because you want to warn people that it’s not going to be easy?



A: We had a very frank interactive discussion with the bankers yesterday and the message we were trying to give them was two fold – first, keep the credit markets going. Let credit go to those sectors which help the economy, which help growth to productive sectors through the small and medium industries, which are more vulnerable in a situation like this. At the same time we told them to keep an eye on credit quality, because we learnt one lesson from the crisis that you should not led the guard slip on credit quality no matter what the temptations and we tried to give that message to the bankers as well.



So please blend between the need to get credit flowing and the need to maintain strict vigil on credit quality. The second message which we tried to give the bankers and indeed to everyone was that, the RBI will respond to the situation as it evolves, because these are uncertain and rapidly and we have tried to be proactive and we will continue to be proactive and we will take care of problems as they arise. We told bankers that we are here to support you but please do what you need to do.



Q: Considering that corporate sector is almost on the verge of a serious concern about even working capital and capex people are worried and at such time what will mollify the RBI into cutting rates, will you look at possibly a fuel price cut will that be one reason or will it be inflation coming down to single digits, just what are you looking at before you can give a kick start or a growth signal?



A: We will balance these objectives of financial stability price and growth, I am unable to say precisely what indicators and what numbers I am looking for. I wish there was any equation which I could plug in and say that this is it. But we will look at inflation numbers and credit flow, corporate sector performance and the international situation as to how quickly it might be returning to the normal or we will look at the recession situation. I am sorry but I am unable to put precise numbers on your question but we will look at the whole gamut of signals.



Dr. D Subbarao, Governor, Reserve Bank of India:



Q: There has been a lot of unconventional steps that have been used. One of the requirements or maybe even the demands of bankers have been the dollar crunch and some facility from RBI to provide dollars. Is there anything in the works in terms of a dollar line of credit, a dollar repo, anything that you are thinking of?



A: We are in constant touch with the banks. Yes, the proposals that you talked about have come to us and indeed there are a number of other proposals on the table. At the moment, I am unable to say precisely what we will do or when we will do if at all we do anything. But we are considering all the alternatives. We have taken unconventional and unorthodox measures indeed. We will not shy away from doing anything merely because it has not been done before. But I am unable to commit to anything specific at this time.



Q: So even a proposal like an SPV for giving money to corporates will be in the realm of possibility?



A: That’s a proposal that I have seen in the papers that’s on the table. But I cannot say if that’s what we will do.



Q: Just to extend the liquidity argument and the unorthodox steps taken for mutual funds is that a problem looked like having been solved?



A: I believe the pressures have eased. Yesterday, at the meeting with the bankers told me about their perception of the issue and they have agreed to do whatever they can and we have persuaded them not only about mutual funds but wherever problems are likely to arise to be ahead of the curve and to respond proactively. We are very proud of having very seasoned, mature, smart bankers and I am sure that they will do a great job.



Q: Do you think the RBI slipped off in estimating that issue because RBI has a daily tab of the amount of money going out in call markets or even the non-call collateralised market, the amount of money drawn out through intervention somewhere perhaps there was not enough anticipation of that problem?



A: No, I don’t believe so. On September 16 when we took the first measure about accommodation of SLR (statutory liquidity ratio) and additional repo window, I believe Lehman Brothers fell on the September 15. If anybody had known that Lehman Brothers was going to fall on September 15 and if he did not anticipate it, you could say that RBI has slipped up. But Lehman Brothers fell on the September 15 and on the September 16, we announced measures and yes there is no way we can anticipate everything. We are reacting to the international situation. I don’t want to give the impression that RBI has a roadmap laid out for every possibility. We will do our very best and we will try to be ahead of the curve and respond proactively.



Q: There is one more unconventional step which one heard in policy circles. There is a lot of money locked in with the government under Market Stabilization Scheme (MSS) over Rs 1.5 lakh crore. Is one of the policies to use that money in lieu of actual fiscal borrowings? Is that also on the table?



A: There is some confusion about this. The MSS is money of the government impounded by the RBI because of sterilisation. It is not as you would see from the budget document. Part of the fiscal deficit is outside the fiscal deficit. It is not as if the government can dip into MSS and say that will take this money. What the government can and probably will do is to borrow and use MSS as a liquidity management variable. We will unwind the MSS to manage liquidity to calibrate it with government borrowing. But it is not a box of money there that the government can take.



Q: Even if there are legal issues to doing it?

A: These are not just legal issues. The government just cannot access it but we can release that money back into the system to calibrate with a government borrowing from the market.



Q: When you discuss a fiscal deficit in the conference and in your statement, you said that there will be greater central government borrowing and that will have an impact on your entry target, your credit growth, it is in that paragraph that you discussed the likely excess borrowing. You said at that time something will have to give, what do you fear will give?



A: There is so much credit available especially because the external credit is less accessible than before. So, if the government borrows somebody has to get crowded out. It’s simply a mathematical problem and a question of who will get crowded out of the private sector because the private sector is borrowing from the government.



Q: You have come into the ship from the outside that is the time when the seas are turbulent what would be your impressions?



A: This is baptism by fire. In quintessential sense but I also want to say that the RBI is a great institution and I am immensely proud of leading this great institution. The way they have responded and the way they have tried to be proactive and the amount of expertise knowledge understanding that is available in this institution is great. So despite all the challenges, I am very proud to be heading this great institution.



Q: I am asking you this because in the past few weeks there has been a perception that a lot of decisions, which would otherwise be taken in by the RBI or which would be spearheaded by the RBI has gotten taken up the Finance Ministry. Do you think that the independence of the RBI was in anyway curtailed?



A: I don’t think the independence or the integrity of RBI has been eroded. There have always been consultations between the government and RBI. As a part of the government the RBI consults the government although it does not do everything that they say. The Finance Minister consults the Governor on the budget. So there is a process of consultation, there is a two-way process consultation that’s been a healthy process of consultation. But it has acquired a high profile in the current times because of the nature of the crisis. So this is more what the media is making it out be then what it actually does in fact.


Airlines miss deadline to pay dues to Airports Authority


25 Oct, 2008, 2014 hrs IST, IANS
NEW DELHI: Indian air carriers have missed the Oct 24 deadline to pay their dues to the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for using airport facilitie
s, an official said on Saturday.

Earlier this week, the AAI issued notices to the airlines, including leading private carriers Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines, asking them to pay their dues. The airlines owe over Rs.10 billion to AAI.

While Jet Airways owes Rs.3.95 billion, Kingfisher owes Rs.2.11 billion.

The AAI official told IANS that no airline had paid up.

Both Jet and Kingfsher Oct 13 announced a strategic alliance following which they now control 60 percent of the airline market share.

India' flagship carrier Air India pays about Rs.18 billion annually towards landing and parking fees and has an overdue amount of Rs.5 billion.

Bargain-hunters trickle back to US housing market


25 Oct, 2008, 1903 hrs IST, REUTERS

PARADISE VALLEY: If you believe the media hype, there are millions of homes for sale in America and not a buyer in sight. But one person's dead market is another's buying opportunity.

In the Phoenix suburbs, a five-bedroom home with a large yard and swimming pool attracted a handful of prospective buyers on a recent weekend afternoon, lured by a reduced price tag and desert mountain views.

As he wandered out to the pool with his wife, Elliott Farber voiced the cautious optimism of someone who has watched the market fall and thinks it just might be time to jump in.

"I hope. Maybe. Fingers crossed. Who knows? It seems to be a decent time to buy, at least from what we can gather, in terms of home prices dropping," said Farber, who just relocated to Arizona from Boston.

Training consultant Mike Forrester and his wife also toured the spacious home, admiring the hardwood floors, fireplace and vaulted ceilings. The asking price has been reduced to $998,000 from $1,095,000.

Forrester isn't sure prices have hit bottom yet and said a decision to buy isn't just about money.

"You have to be a savvy shopper. I think the market hasn't bottomed out yet," he said. "At the same time, there's some (price) threshold ... where you have people who just want what they want."

While sales of existing and new homes continue to fall across the United States and the credit crisis makes mortgages harder to get than they used to be, tumbling prices have begun to lure a few credit-worthy bargain-hunters into the market.

Two German regional banks seek state aid: Report


25 Oct, 2008, 1716 hrs IST, AGENCIES

BERLIN: Two regional German public banks want to call on aid from the government as part of a huge operation to rescue the banking sector, the magazi
ne Der Spiegel claimed on Saturday.

It identifies the banks as Duesseldorf-based WestLB and Hamburg-based HSH Nordbank.

"We have to arm the bank against the forthcoming storms," said WestLB's head, Heinz Hilgert, who plans to ask its supervisory body next month to use all the help made available as part of the rescue plan.

It is checking in particular whether it needs to ask for direct recapitalisation aid, Der Spiegel said.

In February the western regional state (Land) of North Rhine-Westphalia and local savings institutions made available a guarantee of five billion euros (6.35 billion dollars) to WestLB.

The head of the regional HSH Nordbank, Hans Berger, also wants to take advantage of government guarantees provided for under Berlin's massive aid plan of 480 billion euros (610 billion dollars) for the banking sector, the magazine said.

Shareholders will make a decision next week, it said.

So far only the Bavarian public bank BayernLB has sought state aid, of 5.4 billion euros.

The country's second biggest private bank, Commerzbank, is to set up a panel of 40 clients to liaise with management, as reaction to a loss of confidence in the banking sector, the Welt am Sonntag, which goes on sale Sunday, said.

OPEC set to meet regularly as world recession looms


25 Oct, 2008, 1640 hrs IST, AGENCIES

VIENNA: OPEC could meet regularly over the coming months to announce further cuts in oil output as a worldwide recession weighs on energy demand and
crude prices, analysts said.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided at an emergency meeting in Vienna on Friday to slash its official oil output quota by 1.5 million barrels a day from November 1.

OPEC said its decision would be reviewed at its next meeting in Oran, Algeria, on December 17.

However following the Vienna gathering, DnB NOR Markets analyst Torbjorn Kjus said the cartel "probably needs to meet also in November... to initiate further cuts to support prices."

OPEC, which produces 40 percent of world crude, announced a cut to production on Friday in a bid to support oil prices which according to the cartel "have witnessed a dramatic collapse -- unprecedented in speed and magnitude."

Yet after the organization agreed to reduce official output to 27.3 million barrels per day, the price of Brent North Sea crude sank to 61 dollars, the lowest point for 17 months, as recession looms around the globe.

Crude futures in London and New York have plunged close to 60 percent from record highs of above 147 dollars a barrel reached only three months ago when supply concerns sent prices soaring.

OPEC said in its statement published alongside its output decision that "the financial crisis is already having a noticeable impact on the world economy, dampening the demand for energy, in general, and oil in particular."

"Moreover, forecasts indicate that the fall in demand will deepen, despite the approach of winter in the northern hemisphere."

Humphrey Harrison, managing director of energy consultants Horizon Strategies said the market can expect more OPEC meetings on output policy over the next few months.

"We're in wholly unchartered territory right now" regarding the financial crisis, Harrison told AFP. "We're probably going to see many OPEC meetings for a while," added the oil analyst.

Friday's meeting was called to officially discuss the impact of the global financial crisis and looming recession on the oil market. It had originally been planned for November 18 but was brought forward as prices plunged.

Analysts said crude futures could rebound in the long term, irrespective of further cuts in OPEC output.

"Recession fears and uncertainty continue to haunt global markets, while tight credit conditions threaten new energy projects all over the world, which could cause a price spike in the longer run," said Nimit Khamar, an oil analyst at the brokerage firm Sucden.

Ahead of OPEC's meeting in December, the cartel said on Friday that it "cannot be expected to bear alone the burden of restoring equilibrium" between oil supply and demand.

The organization used its statement to call on "non-OPEC producers/exporters to contribute to efforts to restore prices to reasonable levels and eliminate harmful and unnecessary fluctuations."

It's a damp Diwali in Britain!
24 Oct, 2008, 2115 hrs IST, PTI
LONDON: Sales of firecrackers, gold and jewellery have plummeted due to the economic downturn in Britain, spreading gloom among companies that otherwise make brisk business during the festive Diwali season.
Across Britain, people of Indian origin have reduced spending on gifts such as rings, necklaces and bracelets.
This year, local councils have emerged as the main organisers of fireworks and other Diwali-related occasions.
Manjula Sood, the Lord Mayor of Leicester, last week inaugurated the lighting ceremony on Belgrave Road, which is also known as the Golden Mile due to the large number of jewellery shops lining it.
However, this year the Golden Mile has lost some of its sparkle as jewellery sales have plunged drastically due to the economic slowdown.
Some shops there have reported a 50 per cent fall in jewellery sales. Leicester has a large population of Indian origin and has earned the reputation of holding the largest Diwali celebrations outside India. The local council extends considerable support to Diwali festivities every year.
Jaffer Kapasi, director of Leicester Asian Business Association, said Diwali was always a busy time for Asian jewellers in Leicester but this year trade was "drastically down".
"A lot of people are used to exchanging gifts at this time but there's been a real cutback on spending. With all the doom and gloom, people are being very careful," he told the local media.
US trying to teach Iraqis how to spend its oil riches

25 Oct, 2008, 0512 hrs IST, AGENCIES
BAGHDAD: Iraq's government has an unusual money problem as much of the world grapples with a credit crunch, it can't spend its oil riches fast enough
.
The US is trying to change that by training Iraqi bureaucrats struggling to emerge from a centralized system in which nearly all decisions, from where to build a water treatment plant to which workers would do the job, came from the top.
Money also was scarce for more than a decade after the UN Security Council imposed sanctions to punish Saddam Hussein's regime for the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. "Our efforts are devoted to helping the Iraqis spend their own money," said Marc Wall, the US Embassy's coordinator for economic transition in Iraq. "We've zeroed in on it in the last year or two."
The issue came to the fore this summer when the US General Accounting Office predicted Iraq could finish the year with as much as a $79 billion cumulative surplus because of oil revenues and unspent funds from previous budgets. The August report drew outrage in Congress, where lawmakers asked why the Iraqis haven't spent more of their own money on reconstruction efforts while US taxpayers shell out some $12 billion a month for Iraq, most for military operations.
US and Iraqi officials dispute the GAO figures, arguing they are inflated and do not reflect Iraqi accounting procedures. They also say Iraqi spending on reconstruction is expected to increase by 50 percent from 2007 to 2008. But most agree that major obstacles still include inexperienced bureaucrats, too few Iraqi contractors and a cumbersome approval procedure aimed at curbing corruption.
The US Agency for International Development's Tatweer project is designed to train Iraqi civil servants in basic decision-making skills to help them allocate funds and effectively deliver government services such as electricity, water and security.
The $339 million program, paid for by American taxpayers, began in July 2006 and is scheduled to finish in January 2011. Instructors include Iraqis, Jordanians, Lebanese and Egyptians, native Arabic speakers who were mostly educated in the United States or other countries. Each earns about $1,500-$1,700 a month.
One recent class of bureaucrats from various Iraqi ministries, six men and six women sitting around an oval table, listened attentively as the instructor told them how to diagram a decision tree.
The analysis and problem-solving tool is aimed at determining possible sequences of events and their consequences to choose the best investment. But one student raised her hand to ask how, exactly, that would work in Iraq.
"We have instability and insecurity. You have to consider the black market," said Shetha Nasser, a 46-year-old engineer at the Water Resources Ministry. Nasser's concerns reflect the myriad problems facing Iraqis as they try to overcome decades of isolation from war, sanctions and centralization.
The postwar Iraqi government inherited an old-fashioned, paper-based system. Violence also has taken its toll, with insurgents frequently targeting government employees. Wearing a black skirt and sequined headscarf, Nasser said she has worked with feasibility studies for nine years but never really knew how to do them.
"We didn't have clear guidelines or methods ... because of the gap between Iraq and the international community," she said. Instead, the orders generally came from above and needed only to be implemented. Prices also were fixed under Saddam, aiding cost estimates.
"It was easier before the war. It was more stable," she said. "The decision tree actually probably applies more in Iraq now because there are so many different variables here." Sattar Hussein, a 42-year-old instructor for Tatweer, which means development in Arabic, said the key is training Iraqis in how to choose the best projects.
"They have the money, but they don't understand how to invest the money to help the people," the Fallujah native said during a class break for coffee and cookies. "The idea is to prepare these people for the future because they will be the decision-makers."
The Finance Ministry has been preparing to present a $79 billion budget for 2009, with $19.2 billion of that for reconstruction. That would be a record sum after this year's $70 billion budget, including $10.1 billion for reconstruction.
Those figures could be whittled down because of falling oil prices, which have plunged from a summertime high of $150 a barrel to less than $70 this week. Next year's spending plan was based on oil prices remaining above $80.
Wall, the US Embassy's economics transition chief, said the Iraqis could feel the hit but predicted their surplus will protect them. "There is a cushion, but it's not going to be as large as many expected," he said Wednesday during an interview in his office, a former kitchen in Saddam's Republican Palace.
Critics say it's time for the US to force the Iraqi government to step up its own spending.
"If you look at the capacity of the Iraqi government, I think basically it's really the question of will, not capacity," said Lawrence J Korb, a military analyst at the liberal Center for American Progress. "Right now they can sit back ... and not make the hard choices. We do it for them."
Korb said the government has ignored a pool of experienced bureaucrats because they had belonged to Saddam's ousted Baath Party. He also noted Iraqis spend heavily on operating expenses such as government salaries instead of reconstruction.
"The percentage going to current operating expenses is going up every year as opposed to making the people's lives better in the future," he said.
Banks will not be hit by global crisis: FM

25 Oct, 2008, 1959 hrs IST, PTI
SIVAGANGA: The government on Saturday said that the bank deposits are safe and there will be no impact of the 'global economic tsunami' on them.

"We have been insulated from the impact of global economy in the banking sector. There is no need for any apprehension on the part of depositors about any impact of the global recession as their deposits are covered under an insurance scheme," Finance Minister P Chidambaram said while inaugurating a branch of the public sector UCO Bank here.
He said despite the global economic crisis, the country would be able to achieve a growth of 8 per cent during the current fiscal.
Most of the banks in US were facing closure due to the crisis, he said, adding Indian banks, however, were well protected.
"The farsightedness of late Indira Gandhi, who nationlised banks, is paying now. while the US administration is ploughing money to save banks in that country, our banks are well protected due to the nationlisation', he said.
The private sector banks were also on a sound footing, he added.
RBI promises swift action on liquidity if needed

25 Oct, 2008, 1941 hrs IST, PTI
MUMBAI: With the stock market still not not reacting positively to a flurry of measures, the RBI on Saturday promised to act "swiftly and pro-activel
y" to evolving situations and in case of liquidity constraints.
A day after he announced the mid-term review of the annual monetary policy that left the key rates unchanged, RBI Governor D Subba Rao allayed fears of recession in India and maintained the growth story will continue despite a slight deceleration.
Justifying RBI's cautious credit policy announced yesterday, he said the RBI did not tinker with key rates in its credit policy to push growth as it had to balance price stability and growth.
"If there are liquidity constraints or anything needed to be done within RBI's mandate, we will do it," he told reporters adding the RBI would act swiftly and pro-actively to evolving situations.
Between Oct 6-20, the RBI has injected Rs.1,85,000 crore liquidity into the system and the "one per cent repo rate cut was aimed at getting the financial markets going and giving them confidence," he said.
If the situation warranted, Rao said RBI would not not hesitate to either infuse or withdraw liquidity from the system.

Billionaires list: Many Indian tycoons may slip

25 Oct, 2008, 0645 hrs IST,Vijay Gurav, ET Bureau
MUMBAI: The next time Forbes announces its list of billionaires (assuming it dares to do so even amid a massive wealth destruction globally), chances are that many Indian tycoons will find to their dismay that their rankings have slipped a few notches.
Even if they managed to retain their slots, or even climb up a few rungs, it would still be cold comfort, as few billion of their wealth would evaporated amid the ongoing turmoil in the stock market.
As the late British financier Sir James Goldsmith remarked when congratulated for cashing out before the stock market crash of 1987, ”It is like winning a game of bridge on the decks of the Titanic.”
The Sensex recorded the second-biggest single-day fall in absolute terms on Friday when it crashed by 1,071 points, or 11%, to close at 8,701. With this, the index has crashed more than 12,000 points, or nearly 60%, since its peak of 20,873 achieved on January 8, 2008.
Market cap of all the companies traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) has evaporated by a staggering Rs 46 lakh crore, or $940 billion during the period. So, how poorer have top industrialists like the Ambanis, Tatas and Birlas become after the meltdown in the share prices of their companies?
An ET analysis of promoter wealth loss between January 8 and October 24, 2008, shows that the two Ambani brothers bore the brunt of the stock market mayhem, witnessing the highest wealth erosion among promoters of the top business houses in the country.
Though still dominating the market cap ranking, RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani saw his personal wealth crash from $ 57.6 billion as on January 8 to $14.4 billion as on Friday, a fall of 75% since January 8.
A major part of the wealth erosion happened in the flagship company, RIL, whose market cap has declined by Rs 2.8 lakh crore, or $ 57 billion. The market cap of two other group companies Reliance Petroleum and Reliance Industrial Infrastructure fell by $ 15.3 billion and $0.7 billion during the period.
Mukesh’s younger Brother Anil Ambani of the ADAG group saw his wealth tumble from $48.4 billion to $8.4 billion, a loss of 83%. His five companies, Reliance Communication, Reliance Capital, RNRL, Reliance Infrastructure and Adlabs Films, recorded an aggregate market cap loss of $53.7 billion.
Realty major DLF is the third-biggest loser where the promoter wealth has eroded from $44 billion to as low as $6 billion. DLF is followed by Tatas who saw their wealth in 27 listed companies plunge from $38.2 billion to $12.8 billion, a loss of 67%.
TCS, Tata Motors, Tata Power, Tata Communications and Tata Teleservices are among the key companies in the Tata group to have taken a big hit on market cap during January 8 to October 24 2008.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Markets/articleshow/3638778.cms

Market unlikely to witness recovery soon

25 Oct, 2008, 0706 hrs IST,Surya R Kannoth, ECONOMICTIMES.COM
MUMBAI: The worst is not over yet. As equities suffered their worst week in stock market history, it is imminent that the world economy is in deep tr
ouble and it looks like no matter what anyone does, it's not going to do any better.
The MSCI All-Country World Index, a gauge of equity markets in developed and emerging nations, has tumbled 47 per cent this year as a freeze in credit markets sparked by $659 billion of asset write-downs and credit losses at banks raised concern that the global economy is headed for a recession. About $30 trillion of market value has been erased from global equities in 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Mirroring a sharp decline in global equity markets, December Dow Jones, Standard & Poor's 500 and Nasdaq 100 Futures tumbled between 6.3 per cent and 6.7, pointing to carnage on Wall Street Friday after global stocks were pounded on fears that the world is headed for the worst economic slowdown since the Great Depression.
Signs are afoot that some of the world's major economies may be in or close to recession-- technically defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Japan and the euro zone's growth contracted in the second quarter, while the UK economy came to a standstill in the same period.
Back home, the emotional nexus between an economic downturn and a bear market was demonstrated brutally in Friday's trade. Despite continuing pep talk from Finance Minister P Chidambaram and host of measures by RBI to prop up the markets, investors refused to relent.
Ambareesh Baliga, VP, Karvy Stock Broking said, "Indian investors are getting numb to such falls in the markets. Markets are behaving in a very irrational manner and any one having their holdings in equities should use this fall to churn their portfolio and get into better stocks. However, first time investors should stay away from the markets. The redemption pressure from the FIIs is still witnessed, though not necessarily on P-note front, as they have enough in the cash markets. There are no clear indications to the end of their negative view on the Indian equities."
After the massive selling by foreign institutional investors, it was the turn of the long-only funds for redemption, and that being delivery-based, will remain a major concern for the markets.
Anita Gandhi, Head of Institutional Business, Arihant Capital Markets, said, “FIIs continued to sell their holdings. At our desk, even the institutions are opting to stay on the fence. We are advising our clients to stay away from the markets at this juncture. It looks very unlikely for the markets to witness a recovery soon and the pain would be still there, if not on the price front, on the time front."
But the worst hit in the market turmoil were the small-time retail players. Scores of retail investors who rushed into the stock market last year hoping to join the gold rush after the indices hit a series of record highs, have been hit very badly. Investor confidence has been shattered to such a level that they vow not to venture into the markets ever again.
Speaking on a more positive note, J Venkatesan, fund manager, Sundaram BNP Paribas, advises, “I think risk levels have gone up. Till the global situation eases, investors need to bear in mind that these huge volatilities would continue. I sense that market is closer to bottom now. Investors need to stay invested considering the fact that India's growth story is still relevant.”
Chit funds caught in a cleft stick

25 Oct, 2008, 0542 hrs IST,Shailesh Menon, ET Bureau
MUMBAI: The global financial crisis and its escalating fallout in India have taken a heavy toll on an obscure corner of the Indian financial system.
Vishi schemes, community saving schemes popularly known as kuries outside Gujarat, and small unregistered chit funds that invest in stock markets, are struggling to return money invested by investors.
If market sources are to be believed, there are any number of unregistered chit fund managers and vishi sanchalaks (vishi bookmaker) out there struggling to recover public money invested in the market.
While vishi schemes thrive in rural districts of Gujarat, predominantly in Kutch, and some Gujarati-dominated hubs in Mumbai like Ghatkopar, Mulund and Bhiwandi, chit funds rule the roost in southern states like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Registered chit funds are not allowed to invest in stock markets.
In some cases, chit funds can put their money as simple bank deposits, the yields on which should ideally be distributed among scheme subscribers. Registered chit funds can only invest from their own capital, not money deposited by their members. However, a large number of unregistered chit funds flout such rules.
If one goes by unofficial estimates from the All India Association of Chit Funds (AIACF), there are only some 15,000 registered chits funds in India. The number of unregistered ones will be in lakhs.
“Unregistered funds can do anything with people’s money. The chit foreman handling the fund could misappropriate funds by delaying subscriber payments. Though it is only for the short term, a 15-day delay could turn bad for investors,” said M Krishna Bhaarathy, managing director, Mylswamy Chits (P) Limited, and the regional secretary (Tamil Nadu) of AIACF.
“There are very few registered chit funds in Kutch. The situation is worse in Bhuj, where there are 5 to 6 very big vishi schemes, with investment options, that have invested a portion of their money in stock markets,” said Praful Gajra, a Bhuj-based investor and a small-time vishi operator.
According to Mr Gajra, several vishi schemes, which have pooled money and taken delivery of shares, will go bust as the shares in their portfolios have dropped drastically over the past few weeks.
“There are others who only do arbitrage between cash and derivatives. These vishi operators lend a portion of their pool, at interest rates as high as 12% PA, to brokers for trading. The term of the loan usually is one month. At the end of one month, the broker has to return the principal amount, along with the interest,” said Nirav Oza, a Mumbai-based HNI, adding, “For instance, if the operator has given Rs 1 crore from the pool to trade, the broker has to pay back Rs 1.12 crore at the end of one month.”
Unregistered chit funds are run in a manner very similar to vishi schemes. In case of chit funds, the foreman (bookie) enters into an agreement with a number of subscribers that every person shall subscribe a certain sum for a certain period and each subscriber in his turn, as determined by a draw of lots, shall be entitled to a prized amount.

For example, 20 subscribers agree to subscribe to an amount of Rs 5,000 for 25 months, for a total chit value of Rs 1,00,000. Each subscriber will get his chit amount in his turn as determined by draw of lots or by auction.
During auction, all non-prized subscribers bid by allowing a percentage of subscription to be forgone. The highest bidder, who allows maximum percentage to subscribers, is given the chit amount. A dividend is distributed at every draw after commission to the bookie.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/Economy/Finance/Chit_funds_caught_in_a_cleft_stick/articleshow/3639036.cms
RBI to closely monitor overseas operations of Indian banks

24 Oct, 2008, 1619 hrs IST, PTI
MUMBAI: Taking cue from the ongoing financial turmoil, the RBI has decided to strengthen the regulatory framework and monitor the overseas operation
s of Indian banks to ensure their safety and solvency.
The mid-term policy review announced today said an appropriate supervisory framework, including a revised off- site surveillance system, for overseas operations of Indian banks would be finalised by end-November 2008.
In addition, the apex bank would also constitute an internal Working Group to lay down the roadmap for adoption of a suitable framework for cross-border supervision and supervisory cooperation with overseas regulators.
The committee would submit report by the end of November. According to Punjab National Bank Executive Director J M Garg, these are welcome initiatives as it would help in ensuring safety of the banks.
Although Indian banks are largely insulated from the global financial turmoil, further strengthening of safety valve would mitigate the risk down to zero, he said.
The regulator has also asked banks to give detailed information on the sources and deployment of their funds based on the overseas returns.
Concerns were conveyed to banks for taking appropriate action, the statement added. RBI noted banks with overseas presence and branches of foreign banks functioning in India have migrated to Basel II Framework with effect from March 31, 2008.
Remaining banks are required to migrate to the Basel II framework with effect from March 31, 2009, it said.
Banks face rising bad debts, funding squeeze

24 Oct, 2008, 1320 hrs IST, REUTERS
MUMBAI: Indian banks may be relatively sheltered from the direct impact of global credit turmoil, but they are fighting rising loan defaults amid a liquidity crunch that could hit profits. Leading private sector bank ICICI Bank has so far borne the brunt of investor concerns about its exposure to the financial crisis, repeatedly stressing it was solvent and deposits were safe since Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection in mid-September.
While bad debts are expected to rise in coming months, authorities from the prime minister down have declared Indian banks to be safe. In September, the central bank put out a statement saying ICICI was well capitalised as customers in some parts of the country queued to withdraw deposits. But ICICI's shares have still lost 70 percent of their value so far this year as investors fear the worst.
"If a bank faces a liquidity crunch, it is serious trouble. Some of the overseas institutions fell not because they did not have assets but because they did not have liquidity to fund the assets," said A.K. Purwar, a former chairman of State Bank of India, India's largest bank. "In India, despite the mandatory requirements, it has happened so many times before."
On Monday, top Indian lender State Bank of India is expected to post a 16 percent profit rise on solid loan growth, while ICICI is likely to report earnings slipped for the second consecutive quarter. But all eyes will be on ICICI's exposure to bonds linked to Lehman and other soured credit.
India's banking system is dominated by government-run banks -- they account for about 70 percent of assets and liabilities -- and all banks have to hold nearly one-third of their deposits in government bonds and as cash reserves with the central bank.
Since 1969, India has not allowed a bank to collapse, merging at least two dozen troubled lenders with stronger, mostly state-run banks, according to the central bank. And Indian banks' total exposure to failed Western banks amounted to $1 bn, a fraction of their total loan book of $510 bn at end September, according to central bank data.
"Indian banks do face headwinds, though it is not a worrying or dire situation now," said Ritesh Maheswari, senior director of Asia Financial Institutions Ratings at Standard & Poor's in Singapore. "But if the credit crisis is prolonged it could have limited liquidity constraints on Indian banks and many others in the region will also face similar issues."
CREDIT EXPLOSION
Banks had outstanding loans of 25.4 trillion rupees ($510 bn) and total deposits of 34.4 trillion rupees ($690 bn) at end-September, according to central bank data. In the three fiscal years ending March 2008, banks' lending grew at annual rates of around 30 percent. That has slowed to around 25 percent, but still remains above the central bank's prefered rate of 20 percent in 2008/09 (April/March).
Retail loans, mortgages, credit cards, auto and consumer durable loans, which were among the fastest-growing segments, are now likely to be major risk areas as bad debts are expected to rise to 4 percent of advances by March 2009, said rating agency CRISIL, a unit of Standard & Poor's. Loans for housing and stock investments also mushroomed in recent years, helped by booming economic growth. But interest rates have risen, the stock market has plunged by more than half this year and the property market has turned down.
Uses for $700 billion bailout money ever shifting

25 Oct, 2008, 2025 hrs IST, AGENCIES
WASHINGTON: First, the $700 billion rescue for the economy was about buying devalued mortgage-backed securities from tottering banks to unclog frozen credit markets.
Then it was about using $250 billion of it to buy stakes in banks. The idea was that banks would use the money to start making loans again.
But reports surfaced that bankers might instead use the money to buy other banks, pay dividends, give employees a raise and executives a bonus, or just sit on it. Insurance companies now want a piece; maybe automakers, too, even though Congress has approved $25 billion in low-interest loans for them.
Three weeks after becoming law, and with the first dollar of the $700 billion yet to go out, officials are just beginning to talk about helping a few strapped homeowners keep the foreclosure wolf from the door.
As the crisis worsens, the government's reaction keeps changing. Lawmakers in both parties are starting to gripe that the bailout is turning out to be far different from what the Bush administration sold to Congress.
In buying equity stakes in banks, the Treasury has "deviated significantly from its original course," says Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. "We need to examine closely the reason for this change," said Shelby, who opposed the bailout.
The centerpiece of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act is the "troubled asset relief program," or TARP for short. Critics note that tarps are used to cover things up. The money was to be devoted to buying "toxic" mortgage-backed securities whose value has fallen in lockstep with home prices.
But once European governments said they were going into the banking business, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson followed suit and diverted $250 billion to buy stock in healthy banks to spur lending.
Bank executives hinted they might instead use it for acquisitions. Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate banking committee, said this development was "beyond troubling."
Sure enough, a day after Dodd, D-Conn., made the comment, the government confirmed that PNC Financial Services Group Inc. was approved to receive $7.7 billion in return for company stock. At the same time, PNC said it was acquiring National City Corp. for $5.58 billion.
"Although there will be some consolidation, that's not the driver behind this program," Paulson recently told PBS talk show host Charlie Rose. "The driver is to have our healthy banks be well-capitalized so that they can play the role they need to play for our country right now."
Other planned uses of the bailout money have lawmakers protesting, although it is only fair to note there is nothing in the law that they just wrote to prevent those uses.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. questioned allowing banks that accept bailout bucks to continue paying dividends on their common stock.
"There are far better uses of taxpayer dollars than continuing dividend payments to shareholders," he said.
Schumer, whose constituents include Wall Street bankers, said he also fears that they might stuff the money "under the proverbial mattress" rather than make loans.
Neel Kashkari, head of the Treasury's financial stability program, told Dodd's committee this past week that there are few strings attached to the capital-infusion program because too many rules would discourage financial institutions from participating.

Asia-Europe summit shows power shifting east: David Miliband

25 Oct, 2008, 1612 hrs IST, AGENCIES
LONDON: The 43-nation Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM), which wound up in Beijing on Saturday, showed that economic power has shifted from the West to the
East, said British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.
In the Chinese capital, leaders called for an overhaul of the world's financial mechanisms and discussed climate change and energy security.
"I don't think it's just the fact that we are meeting in The Great Hall of the People and we listened to the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party talking about the need to prop up global capital markets that brings home to one that there is this big shift in economic power," Miliband told BBC radio from Beijing.
"But what is also clear is that there's been an increase in economic vulnerability: the Pakistani prime minister (Yousuf Raza Gilani) was here talking about how his country is now threatened with an economic tsunami."
The ASEM which was set up in 1996 as a potential counter for Europe to strong US influence in Asia.
Miliband said the meeting produced "renewed commitment to multilateral co-operation, deeper multilateral co-operation, above all in the area of financial regulation."
He said Asian countries were not blaming the West for the financial crisis, insisting there was a shared commitment to resolving it.
"There are deeper imbalances in the world economy that need to be addressed and that actually are part of the global economic downturn," he said.
"It's not just a financial problem we've got; it's a more fundamental issue of economic imbalance."
Top UN officials urge reform of world finance system

25 Oct, 2008, 0803 hrs IST, AGENCIES
UNITED NATIONS: UN chief Ban Ki-moon joined chief executives of key UN institutions in calling for a meaningful and well-coordinated reform of the i
nternational financial system.
Participants at yesterday's UN summit said that "the market and regulatory failures that have led to this (financial) crisis must be addressed as a matter of urgency" when leaders of 20 industrialized and emerging powers meet in Washington November 15.
"We reaffirm the need for meaningful, comprehensive and well-coordinated reform of the international financial system and pledge our support to this end," they said in a joint statement.
They also urged rich countries to strengthen their commitments on official development assistance to poor nations and called for a successful conclusion to the Doha Round of trade liberalization talks.
"A healthy, open and rule-based trading system is essential to maintaining long-term economic growth to the benefit of all," they added.
The Doha Round was launched in the Qatari capital in 2001 with the aim of liberalizing trade rules for the benefit of developing countries. But a summit in July collapsed over a disagreement on tariffs between the United States and India.
Attending yesterday's summit were World Bank president Robert Zoellick, International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, UN Development Program administrator Kemal Dervis and the heads of several other UN agencies, including the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Health Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft moves to higher orbit


24 Oct, 2008, 2100 hrs IST, ECONOMICTIMES.COM


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Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft moves to higher orbit
Chandrayaan-1 is now moving in an orbit of 74,715 km from the earth, making it the first Indian spacecraft to go beyond the 36,000-km-high.
Can Chandrayaan find water on Moon?
Chandrayaan-1 has begun its journey to the Moon to find water on its surface.
India's manned mission not before 2012: Nair
ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair said India's manned mission would take atleast another three years.
Chandrayaan-I's satellite health normal
In this orbit, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft takes about 11 hours to go round the earth once.

Chandrayaan-1 functioning normally: ISRO ISRO scientists plan to repeatedly fire the onboard Liquid Apogee Motor at opportune moments.
From Aryabhatta, this coconut seller has seen them all
Kondappa Naidu sells coconuts on the main road at Sulurpet, the last village before Sriharikota, where the space centre is located.
Reality check: Chandrayaan has uncertain days ahead
ISRO is looking forward to challenging days when the spacecraft will have to be manoeuvred from an earth orbit into a 100-km lunar orbit.
India's first moon mission is world's 68th
Chandrayaan-, that lifts off from Sriharikota, is India's first and the world's 68th mission to the moon.
Chandrayaan-1 and PSLV-C11
In Pics: Chandrayaan-1 and PSLV-C11

World salutes ISRO for launch of maiden lunar mission
Ambassador Mulford said the US was proud to participate in the mission as the country had provided two instruments for it.

Chandrayaan-2 likely next year end or 2010: ISRO
ISRO is planning to send its second lunar odyssey, Chandrayaan-2, an Indo-Russian joint venture, likely by the end of next year or early 2010.
India plans to send two men to space by 2015
The rocket as well as the space capsule in which the humans would return has to get a specified rating, technically called the human rating.
Indian space launches in the past
The Chandrayaan moon mission will be the 27th by the Indian Space Research Organisation.
Mission moon: Dream Team
Here is the list of team members of India's first unmanned Moon mission Chandrayaan-I.
Chandrayaan-I
In Pics: Chandrayaan-I



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