07.11.2007

ANNOUNCEMENT: HAPPY DIWALI TO ALL OF YOU. Have been whisked away out of station even before I could post a greeting to all of you. Just back. We will resume from Monday.

• What is Dhanteras?
• It is a Hindu festival falling on the 13^th day of the month of Ashwin. Also known as Dhantrayodashi, it takes place two days before Diwali, in honour of Dhanvantari, the physician of gods and an incarnation of Vishnu.
• On this day women purchase gold or silver or at least one or two new utensils.
• More on UAE immigrants’ problem
• UAE announced an amnesty and regularization scheme to address the problem of unacceptably high number of expatriate workers staying on in violation of its residency laws.
• By November 3, when the amnesty ended, some 95,000 illegal residents including 40,000 Indians had secured regularization, many of them getting reabsorbed in the workforce.
• The genesis of the problem lies in employees moving away from their contracts in a bid to beat a bad deal. Unscrupulous agents, unkept promises on wages further compounded the problem.
• The government’s long pending move to give more teeth to the Emigration Act, 1983 should be pursued to ensure that our workers are not shortchanged by unscrupulous agents and foreign employers.
• The ill-effects of bio fuel promotion
• While we have been noting from time to time the benefits of bio-fuel programmes, an article in Hindu argues that the bio-fuel hunger of the North (meaning developed countries) is fuelling the South’s (meaning poor and developing countries) starvation.
• FAO estimates that the world is facing the lowest ever food reserves in 25 years this year. About 850 mn people are going hungry because they could not afford to buy food. Taking land out of food production exacerbates the effects of bad harvests and rising demand for food.
• It argues that the bio-fuel programme ultimately will be causing more global warming than petroleum. Nitrogen fertilizers (used in raising bio-fuel crops) generate greenhouse gases – nitrous oxide that is 296 times more powerful thatn CO2. Ethanol from maize causes between 0.9 to 1.5 times as much warming as petrol and rape seed oil (the source of more than 80% of the world’s biodiesel) generates 1 to 1.7 times the impact of diesel.
• RBI to seek curbs on automatic ECBs
• In a bid to control the flood of forex inflows into the country, the RBI is proposing to the government that the limit for ECBs through automatic route (i.e., without prior RBI approval) be reduced from the present $500 mn to about $20 mn.
• India and financial inclusion: a BCG study
• Only one out of three people have access to formal banking. India is home to the second largest number (135 mn) of financially excluded households.
• Barely 34% of its population is availing formal banking.
• Penetration of savings accounts in rural India is about 24% compared to 56% in urban India.
• India’s place in trade development index
• It is an annual index measured by UNCTAD. The index is a measure of the degree of integration between trade and economic and social development. It was launched in 2005 as a benchmarking tool monitoring changes across various factors.
• India is at the 86^th place in this index behind smaller countries like Botswana, Algeria, Ecuador and Sri Lanka.
• Finally NSDL gets to act as the CRA for the New Pension Scheme
• Successfully wading through the objections raised by SEBI, NSDL is finally given the nod to act as the Central Recordkeeping Agency of the NPS.
• Look at the details of the stand-off between SEBI and NSDL on the issue here.
• An alternative to privatization of Public Sector Enterprises
• It is an excellent article suggesting some original ideas on the problem that confronts the governments from time to time. Read it in full here.
• The central idea of the suggestion is that government should divest 74% shareholding to retail investors. Whatever can’t be absorbed by them can be sold to government financial institutions. Out of the balance 26%, government may sell about 5% to the employees and give them a small percentage as sweat equity.
• When this is implemented, as government’s shareholding falls below 51%, these PSEs shall cease to be ‘state’ under Article 12 of the Constitution and their decisions will not be subject to judicial review in terms of Article 14. They will go out of the jurisdiction of the investigative agencies, parliamentary committees, vigilance and CAG, problems which have paralyzed them for long.
• Helping Pakistan cope with its problems
• If you need examples of lateral thinking, I would suggest SSSA Aiyar as one who displays it. While everyone the world over seems to be obsessed with lifting the emergency imposed in Pakistan, he is suggesting that India should encourage the shift in mind-set that is currently going on in Pakistan. That shift is about treating jehadis as liabilities, not assets. India can help in the following ways:
• It needs to talk to Pakistan on partial demilitarization on the western border so that it will be able to redeploy in full strength in NWFP without having to worry about weakness on the Indian front. This will constitute Indian cooperation in helping it overcome its internal jehadi problem and can be an important building block of a future anti-jehadi common program.
• It needs to show flexibility and eagerness in resolving Kashmir issue. Perhaps the LOC can be treated as an international border and an autonomous Kashmir region formed.
• India should not gloat over Pakistan’s miseries.
• A destabilized, nuclear Pakistan with lot of jehadis roaming around the country is not in the interest of India. Pakistan failed to recognize this when it encouraged Taliban and jehadis. India should learn from its mistakes.
• Researchers find hunger switch
• Australian doctors said they had found a molecule that suppresses appetite. They found out that MIC-1 protein targets the receptors in brain that switch appetite on or off.