Riaz Haq writes this data-driven blog to provide information, express his opinions and make comments on many topics. Subjects include personal activities, education, South Asia, South Asian community, regional and international affairs and US politics to financial markets. For investors interested in South Asia, Riaz has another blog called South Asia Investor at http://www.southasiainvestor.com and a YouTube video channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkrIDyFbC9N9evXYb9cA_gQ
Investors of Indian Companies controlled by families are growing suspicious in the wake of the Satyam scandal involving the Raju brothers. Older brother Ramalinga Raju served as chairman and younger brother Ram Raju was managing director of Satyam. B. Ramalinga Raju admitted he had a fictitious cash balance of more than $1 billion on Satyam balance sheet and said in a letter of resignation that he overstated profits for the past several years, overstated the amount of debt owed to the company and understated liabilities. Eventually, he said, the scheme reached "simply unmanageable proportions" and he was left in a position that was "like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten."
In the aftermath of the Satyam scandal described as "India's Enron", shares of the energy giant, Reliance Industries, controlled by one Ambani brother, are down 19%. The smaller listed Reliance units have likewise been punished in the market. Reliance Communications has tumbled nearly 28%. By contrast, Maruti Suzuki and Hindustan Unilever -- thanks to the foreign scrutiny their names imply -- are up 3.3% and 6.5%, respectively, from their close on Jan. 6. The 30-stock Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index, by comparison, is down 12%, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Indian government's handling of the crisis of confidence in publicly traded companies will hold the key to the nation remaining a preferred destination for investors. Their swift move to fire and replace Satyam's board of directors -- and the announcement by SEBI, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, that it will start reviewing auditors' work -- are steps aimed at restoring investor confidence.
One measure of how investors respond could come on Tuesday when Infosys Technologies -- considered a model of good governance in India -- announces its fiscal third-quarter earnings.
Whether shareholders' attention reverts to pure numbers or stays on the scrutiny of the quality of earnings will reveal much about how lasting this post-Satyam focus on governance will be.
Many Israelis are bringing their lawn chairs and binoculars to watch death and destruction rain upon Gazans, according to a report in Wall Street Journal.
The report mentions Moti Danino, one of dozens of Israelis who have arrived from all over Israel, some with sack lunches and portable radios tuned to the latest reports of the battle raging in front of them. Some, like Mr. Danino, are here to egg on friends and family members in the fight in Gaza.
The Jewish spectators share hilltop space with many camera-toting Israeli and foreign journalists, who have so far been banned by the Israeli military from entering Gaza to report on the conflict, according to the Journal.
Here's an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal story about a joyful Israeli spectator named Jocelyn Znaty:
Jocelyn Znaty, a stout 60-year-old nurse for Magen David Adom, the Israeli counterpart of the Red Cross, can hardly contain her glee at the site of exploding mortars below in Gaza."Look at that," she shouts, clapping her hands as four artillery rounds pound the territory in quick succession. "Bravo! Bravo!" She acknowledges an uncomfortable, self-conscious awareness that she is cheering on a deadly war. Israeli planes, ships and artillery have blasted the small, sealed-off territory for more than a week, killing more than 680 Palestinians and injuring about 3,000. Ten Israelis have been killed, including three civilians, according to U.N. officials.
A tower of white smoke rose from the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun after another Israeli bombardment Monday morning, and a half-dozen Israelis, perched on a dusty hilltop, gazed at the scene like armchair military strategists.
Avi Pilchick took a long swig of Pepsi and propped a foot on the plastic patio chair he had carried up the hillside to watch the fighting. "They are doing good," Pilchick, 20, said of Israeli forces battling Palestinian militants in Gaza, "but they can do more."
This is a really macabre situation where one community is enjoying watching the Israeli state-sponsored spectacle of murder and mayhem of their neighbors, including innocent Palestinian women and children. In Israel today, there are echoes of Christian persecution in Rome that became a spectator sport for the ordinary Romans. Can this overt display of such deep hatred by neighbors lead to peace between Israelis and Palestinians?
I just hope that the ghoulish behavior of the Israelis featured in the newspaper stories is not representative of the feelings of the majority of Israeli citizens.
Satyam Computer Services Ltd., considered the poster child of India's information technology age, has shocked the world with a scandal of major proportions. The chairman of Satyam, a name that literally means "truth" in Sanskrit, said he cooked up key financial results, including a fictitious cash balance of more than $1 billion, raising doubts about the IT revolution hype in India that has attracted many international companies and significant foreign investments to the nation of over one billion people.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that B. Ramalinga Raju, founder and chairman of Satyam Computer Services Ltd., said in a letter of resignation that he also overstated profits for the past several years, overstated the amount of debt owed to the company and understated its liabilities. Eventually, he said, the scheme reached "simply unmanageable proportions" and he was left in a position that was "like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten."
In the four-and-a-half page letter distributed by the Bombay stock exchange, Mr. Raju described a small discrepancy that grew beyond his control. “What started as a marginal gap between actual operating profit and the one reflected in the books of accounts continued to grow over the years. It has attained unmanageable proportions as the size of company operations grew,” he wrote. Mr. Raju ended his letter by acknowledging his misdeeds and said, "l am now prepared to subject myself to the laws of the land and face consequences thereof". While the Satyam scandal is being dubbed as "India's Enron", Raju's admission is in sharp contrast to Enron chairman Ken Lay's defiance in the face of massive evidence against him. Indeed, Raju's words are rare in the annals of corporate confessions and acceptance of personal responsibility by a top leader.
Deeply worried by the fall-out from the Satyam scandal, other Indian firms are downplaying it. "I'm very sure that this is just an isolated incident which has nothing to do with the industry that it is in, the business that it is in, or the country it is in. It has to do with individuals and the specific company," Mr. Suresh Senapathy of Wipro told the Wall Street Journal.
The analysts, however, are not as sanguine as Mr. Senapathy. "I think it's going to be a mixed bag for the other offshore IT-services firms," said George Price, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. "Both investors and clients and potential clients are going to be more concerned about how stable their providers are."
In the wake of Satyam revelations, the company's market valuation has dropped by nearly 80% in two days. India's benchmark Sensex index has plunged 7.2%, as investors reassess level of risk in the Indian market amid serious concerns about corporate governance and accounting standards across Indian industry.
In Thursday trading, there were continuing fears that the Satyam scandal will affect other companies and hurt foreign investment. ICICI Bank tumbled 11%, Reliance Industries sank 13%, and Reliance Communications skidded 17%. However, shares of rival software firms outperformed the broad market, with Infosys Technologies gaining 1.7% and Wipro rising 0.2%.
Even before the Satyam scandal and despite the 55% drop in India's benchmark Sensex in 2008, relative valuations were high. The market's PE ratio, based on expected earnings for the next 12 months, is 60% higher than emerging markets as a group and 72% higher according to its price-to-book ratio. The roughly 2% yield on the Sensex is minuscule compared to regional markets offering upwards of 5%.
India's market cap overtook its GDP in May 2007. By January 2008, it had reached 180% of GDP, extraordinarily high compared to 131% for the U.S. during the dot-com bubble and 150% for Japan at its market peak. In July, the market-cap ratio dropped below 100%. What it means is that even if the Indian economy continues to do well over the next two decades, GDP would have to more than double for the market cap to return to its previous heights without an equities bubble. If the economy keeps growing at 7.2%, that doubling would take at least ten years.
Hong Kong-based Political & Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd. has recently rated India as the riskiest of 14 Asian countries, not including Pakistan and Afghanistan, it analyzed for 2009. Satyam scandal is likely to add additional risk if the Indian authorities and corporate sector fail to take measures to restore investor confidence in India's publicly traded companies.
"We have three foreigners, including women," the gunman said into the phone. The response was brutally simple: "Kill them." Gunshots then rang out inside the Mumbai hotel, followed by cheering that could be heard over the phone.
The ruthless exchange comes from a transcript of phone calls the Indian officials claim they intercepted during the November Mumbai attacks. They were part of a dossier of evidence New Delhi handed Pakistan this week that it claims definitively proves that the siege was launched from across the border. The New York Times reports that the dossier was also shared this week with diplomats from friendly nations; one described it as “comprehensive,” another as “convincing.”
The Mumbai transcripts, which were obtained by an Indian newspaper The Hindu, show that the 10 gunmen who carried out the attacks were in close contact with their handlers throughout the siege. India says the handlers directing the attacks that left 164 dead were senior leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group.
"There are three ministers and one secretary of the cabinet in your hotel. We don't know in which room," the handler told a gunman inside the Taj Mahal hotel at 3:10 am on the first night of the attack.
"Oh! That is good news. It is the icing on the cake!" the gunman said.
The handlers told another team of gunmen who had seized a Jewish center to shoot hostages if necessary.
"If you are still threatened, then don't saddle yourself with the burden of the hostages. Immediately kill them," he said.
He then added, "If the hostages are killed, it will spoil relations between India and Israel."
"So be it, God willing," the gunman replied.
Six Jewish foreigners, including a rabbi and his wife, were killed inside the Jewish center.
Later in the night, nearly 24 hours after the attacks began, the handlers urged the gunmen to "be strong in the name of Allah"
"Brother, you have to fight. This is a matter of prestige of Islam," the handler said. "You may feel tired or sleepy, but the commandos of Islam have left everything behind, their mothers, their fathers."
The gunmen were told several times not to kill any Muslim hostages.
The attackers used several different mobile phones, including those belonging to the hostages. Shortly after the siege began, Indian authorities say they began intercepting calls from inside the hotel. They were also able to pick up calls carried over the Internet (VOIP calls), which the handlers used to route some calls, according to the the Indian government dossier.
The siege lasted nearly three days, far longer than security experts said it should have, and, apparently, far longer than the terrorists expected as well. The handlers told the gunmen on Nov. 27 that "the operation has to be concluded tomorrow morning." But it was 36 more hours before it finished.
Much of the dialogue has a teacher-student dynamic, and indeed, the surviving gunman has said he and the rest of the group were trained by Lashkar in Pakistani Kashmir.
"We made a big mistake," one of the gunman says into the phone in the early hours of the siege.
"What big mistake?"
"When we were getting into the boat ... another boat came. Everyone jumped quickly. In this confusion, the satellite phone of Ismail got left behind." The investigation shows the gunmen entered Mumbai, which sits on the Arabian sea, by a rubber dinghy.
The attacks against iconic Mumbai targets were covered nonstop by news channels around the world, which the handlers used TV reports to guide the gunmen, the dossier says. The handlers warned when commandos roped down to the Jewish center from helicopters.
The dossier included photographs of dozens of items recovered in the attacks, including GPS units, mobile phones, guns, and explosives, as well as data gleaned from satellite phones, and details from the interrogation of the lone surviving gunman.
It also had pictures of more mundane items India calls incriminating because they were made in Pakistan, including pickles, detergent, a match box, tissue paper, a Mountain Dew bottle, shaving cream and a towel.
But the strongest — and most chilling — evidence that the gunmen were not acting alone came from the phone transcripts.
"Keep your phone switched on," a handler said in the midst of the siege, "so that we can hear the gunfire."
It's not clear who the handlers were or where they were located.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Tuesday that he did not believe the gunmen were acting alone, and Pakistani state agencies must have had a hand in the attacks, without offering any evidence.
The dossier made no mention of any Pakistani officials or agencies.
Pakistani authorities are reviewing the evidence, but have dismissed Singh's claims as "a propaganda offensive" designed "to whip up tensions" in the region.
Indian leaders have made clear they do not want a military conflict with Pakistan, and Pakistan's intelligence chief said there will be no war over the Mumbai attacks. New York Times correspondent Somini Sengupta said in an interview on NPR radio today that many Indians realize that there will be "swift retaliation" by Pakistan if India launched air strike on targets in Pakistan.
These transcripts and accounts of Mumbai suggest that the cold-blooded gunmen were essentially human drones directed, manipulated and controlled by their remote masters. Without suggesting any moral equivalence, the methods of Mumbai attackers can be compared to the high-tech warfare by American predator drones that wreak havoc on the ground in Afghanistan and FATA, thousands of miles away from their pilots sitting in front of video screens with joy sticks in Nevada, USA.
It should be recalled that India deployed a large number of its troops on Pakistani border for almost a year in an exercise of "coercive diplomacy" after attacks on Indian parliament in 2001. Pakistan responded by mobilizing its troops. In the end, the Indian strategy did not work. After Mumbai, India is relying on a diplomatic offensive to bring international pressure on Pakistani government to achieve its objective of stopping further attacks from its neighbor's soil. Missing from this strategy, however, is a political track aimed at resolving the key dispute on the status of Kashmir that has caused continuing hostilities and recurring tensions between the two neighbors since their independence in 1947.
Here's a video clip of the live coverage of Mumbai attacks:
President-elect Barack H. Obama has finally broken his silence by expressing his "deep concern" about mounting civilian casualties as the carnage in Gaza has continued into the second week. He added he would have plenty more to say after he takes office on January 20, 2009.
Is Obama a true friend and a genuine ally of the state of Israel? This question was asked repeatedly during the presidential election campaign of 2008. As expected, each presidential candidate vied with the rest of the field to prove their credentials to AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee aka the all powerful Israel lobby) by offering total and unconditional support to Israel. In fact, Obama went beyond all other candidates in this competition by declaring at an AIPAC conference, where all of the presidential hopefuls lined up to kowtow to the Israel lobby, that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided". "Let me be clear," he said, "Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive and that allows them to prosper. But any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided," he added, in efforts to secure the Jewish vote. Later, Obama backtracked from his controversial statement about Jerusalem.
Let's examine seriously what it means to be a friend of Israel in practical terms. Does it mean slavishly echoing the positions of Israeli government and AIPAC without much thought? Or does it require the US to behave like a friend who tells Israel the truth, no matter how unpleasant, to help make life better for both Israel and the US in an increasingly enraged world?
Looking at the long, checkered history of America's involvement as Mid East peace broker, there have only been two American presidents who can claim any measure of tangible success: President Jimmy Carter and President George H.W. Bush, the father of the outgoing president George W. Bush. President Carter is credited with the Camp David Accord that resulted in peace between Israel and Egypt in 1970s, while President Bush Sr. initiated the Madrid Mideast Peace Conference in 1991 that led to Oslo accord in 1993. Since the mid-1990s, there has been no progress toward resolving any outstanding issues between Israelis and Palestinians. Neither Clinton nor Bush showed the kind of courage required to tell the Jewish state what they must do to reach a viable peace accord that allows both Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace side by side. Their rhetoric never really matched their actions. According to reliable sources, each proposal by Clinton and Bush Jr. was first shared with Israel, and only after its modifications and approval by Israel was it presented to the Palestinians. In every major or minor dispute, the US openly and vocally sided with Israel. Both Clinton and Bush took the easy way out by heaping scorn and criticism on the Palestinians and by failing to press the Israelis to make any substantial concessions, while Israel continued to build and grow settlements on Palestinian lands as facts-on-the-ground. In fact, it would be accurate to say that things have never been as bad as they are today. The worsening Mideast situation has been a boon for Al Qaeda and Taliban recruiting and it has fueled anti-American sentiments throughout the world, particularly the Muslim world.
What is it that former presidents Carter and Bush Sr. did that has been missing lately? In the words of former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami who said in 2006 that Carter and Bush succeeded because they were "ready to confront Israel head-on and overlook the sensibilities of her friends in America." If Barack H. Obama is a true friend of Israel, he should be warning Israel about the danger of becoming an apartheid state, just as Carter has.
I suspect Obama will try and test how far he can push the Israelis to make concessions that are in their own best interest to reach durable peace in the Middle East. But he will have to deal with AIPAC, the extremely short-sighted and power-drunk Israeli lobby in America that has been the main obstacle to any real and meaningful progress toward peace in the Middle East. Ultimately, Obama will have to decide if he is willing to take the risk of becoming another one-term president, like Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush before him.
Here is a video clip of Obama addressing AIPAC, the powerful Israel lobby in US:
Here's another videoclip about Israeli bombing of American Navy Ship USS Liberty in 1967. It has been described as "cold-blooded" murder of American sailors by a paranoid Israeli military that assumed USS Liberty was spying on Israel:
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or Drones designed and manufactured in Pakistan have been making news since IDEAS 2008 event in November of last year. Also in the news has been the growing reliance on armed drones (aka predators) by Americans in Afghanistan and Pakistan's FATA region to target militants with increasing casualties. This post is an attempt to put these headlines in perspective for those interested in the 21st century high tech warfare.
Back in 1970, the U.S. Army Gen. William Westmoreland is reported to have said: “On the battlefield of the future, enemy forces will be located, tracked and targeted almost instantaneously through the use of data links, computer-assisted intelligence and automated fire control. … I am confident the American people expect this country to take full advantage of its technology–to welcome and applaud the developments that will replace wherever possible the man with the machine.” Is this vision from the 1970s being realized today?
The basic strategies and thought processes are the same but the methods of Sun Tzu or Carl von Clausewitz or WW2 are long gone as the modern battlefields evolve. There are still tactics such as the use of decoys, deception and the element of surprise, but today the remote-controlled Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs), high-tech guidance and targeting systems, mobile missile launchers and anti-aircraft systems are some of the most sophisticated technologies on the planet.
Reflecting the modern realities, the US military is targeting its recruiting efforts on a generation of Americans that has grown up with computer-based video games. The recently opened Army Experience Center in Philadelphia is a fitting counterpart to the retail experience: 14,500 square feet of mostly shoot-’em-up video games and three full-scale simulators, including an AH-64 Apache Longbow helicopter, an armed Humvee and a Black Hawk copter with M4 carbine assault rifles. For those who want to take the experience deeper, the center has 22 recruiters, according to a report in the New York Times.
On a practical level, thousands of miles away from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, American remote pilots in Nevada fly armed drones and target the perceived enemy with deadly force. In front of the remote human pilots is a live video from the Predator's camera, thousands of feet above ground. Buildings and trucks come into view. They zoom in and out, put the cross-hairs on the targets and fire missiles with ease, killing dozens on the ground.
Beyond Nevada,at Djibouti's Camp Le Monier, CIA agents and special forces troops - about 1500 personnel in all - have opened a wide-ranging but little-reported front in President George W. Bush's so-called "war on terror".
This high-tech, not-so-covert battle is part of a broader US effort against suspected terrorists. It surfaces frequently, with news of air strikes on suspected Taliban forces in Afghanistan or al Qaeda operatives in Yemen. Such warfare places heavy reliance on the accuracy and breadth of human intelligence on the ground. In Afghanistan, failure of such intelligence has often led to growing friendly fire incidents and increasing civilian casualties.
In addition to human intelligence on the ground, there is need for Electronic Warfare Support (ES). ES in military terms, is the passive detection of signals in order to detect and locate threats or target location, information necessary to conduct Electronic Attack (EA). By comparison, Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) is the related process of analyzing and identifying the intercepted frequencies (e.g. as a cell phone or RADAR). SIGINT is a combination of ELINT, COMINT, and MASINT.
On the military strategy and planning front, wargames are a subgenre of strategy video games that emphasize strategic or tactical warfare on a map. Computer wargames are generally classified based on whether a game is turn-based or real-time and whether the game's focus is upon military strategy or tactics. These distinctions divide computer wargames into four categories: real-time strategy, real-time tactics, turn-based strategy, and turn-based tactics. Wargaming is an essential part of any high-tech military campaign.
Given the nature of the broad shift to high-tech warfare in the battlefields of the world, it is understandable that Pakistan's military is beginning to take it seriously. All three Pakistani military branches have sought to build UAV capabilities. The Army has considerably increased its UAV inventory; the Air Force has formed two UAV squadrons (with the intention of fielding up to six); and the Navy tested the Schiebel Camcopter S-100 rotary UAV from a frigate in March, Defense News reports. Karachi-based Integrated Dynamics, the designer and manufacturer of drones for Pakistan Army and Air Force, actually exports its Border Eagle surveillance drone to the United States for border patrol duties. The company also makes drones for the turbojet-powered Tornado decoy, which can fly up to 200 kilometers, and emit false radar signals to confuse enemy air defenses into thinking they are attacking aircraft.
Pakistan's traditional rival India is pursuing relationships with Israel and UK to acquire UAVs. All of India's current UAV needs are met by Israel, and this partnership will ensure that will continue to be the case for at least the near future.
Death and destruction continued to rain on Gazans as Israel began its ground assault. Here are a few of the horrifying images of the brutality the Jewish state is committing against the innocent Palestinian children:
PNN -Israeli forces killed two girls in an air attack on Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip early Tuesday. Local sources report that a missile destroyed a house belonging to Talal Hamdan in Beit Hanoun, killing his two daughters of 12 and 4 years old. A son is reported seriously injured. Yesterday Israeli forces killed four sisters and a four year old boy.
Samera Baalusha (34) carries her surviving child Mohamad (15 months) while she waits to see the body of her daughter Jawaher Baalusha (aged 4) during the funeral held for her and four of her sisters who were killed in an Israeli missile strike, on December 29, 2008 in the Jebaliya refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip
A Palestinian security force officer carries a wounded girl into the emergency room at Shifa hospital in Gaza City , Saturday, Dec. 27, 2008.
Shifa hospital ICU: a six year old with down syndrome suffers brain trauma after Israeli attack.
These pictures clearly debunk the Israeli claim that only the Hamas fighter are being targeted. "About 30 percent of our cases are children" says Dr. Fawzi Nablusi, one of al-Shifa's hospital emergency room doctors. A paramedic working for an Oxfam-funded organization was killed today after an ambulance was hit by an Israeli-fired shell, according to British charity Oxfam.
Israel is not enhancing its security by lengthening the list of war crimes committed by Israeli military and government against the Arab population since its founding. In fact, if Lebanon is any guide, the Jewish state is making itself less safe with every innocent casualty it causes in Gaza. It is strengthening Hamas rather than weakening it by its dastardly behavior in Gaza.
Here's a brief but shocking video of Israeli carnage of Gazans:
Please review and sign this online petition to the US Foreign Relations Committee to exert Congressional influence on Israel to end atrocities on Gazans.
International Day of Dignity in Support of Gaza is planned for Friday January 9, 2008. There will be an Open Friday Prayer in the San Francisco Civic Center at noon on January 9 to pray and express our solidarity with Gazans. Please check to find out the nearest location to you to express your support for the Gazans under vicious Israeli assault. Please click here if you are on Facebook.
UPDATE: A video presentation by Miko Peled, author of the General's Son:
Here's an Australian TV documentary on how Israelis govt tortures Palestinian children:
India, often described as peaceful, stable and prosperous in the Western media, remains home to the largest number of poor and hungry people in the world. About one-third of the world's poor people live in India. More than 450 million Indians exist on less than $1.25 a day, according to the World Bank. It also has a higher proportion of its population living on less than $2 per day than even sub-Saharan Africa. India has about 42% of the population living below the new international poverty line of $1.25 per day. The number of Indian poor also constitute 33% of the global poor, which is pegged at 1.4 billion people, according to a Times of India news report. More than 6 million of those desperately poor Indians live in Mumbai alone, representing about half the residents of the nation's financial capital. They live in super-sized slums and improvised housing juxtaposed with the shining new skyscrapers that symbolize India's resurgence. According to the World Bank and the UN Development Program (UNDP), 22% of Pakistan's population is classified as poor.
There is widespread hunger and malnutrition in all parts of India. India ranks 66th on the 2008 Global Hunger Index of 88 countries while Pakistan is slightly better at 61 and Bangladesh slightly worse at 70. The first India State Hunger Index (Ishi) report in 2008 found that Madhya Pradesh had the most severe level of hunger in India, comparable to Chad and Ethiopia. Four states — Punjab, Kerala, Haryana and Assam — fell in the 'serious' category. "Affluent" Gujarat, 13th on the Indian list is below Haiti, ranked 69. The authors said India's poor performance was primarily due to its relatively high levels of child malnutrition and under-nourishment resulting from calorie deficient diets.
Indian media's headlines about the newly-minted Indian billionaires need to bring sharper focus on the growing rich-poor gap in India. On its inside pages, The Times of India last year reported Communist Party leader Sitaram Yechury's as saying that "on the one hand, 36 Indian billionaires constituted 25% of India’s GDP while on the other, 70% of Indians had to do with Rs 20 a day". "A farmer commits suicide every 30 minutes. The gap between the two Indias is widening," he said.
Today's San Jose Mercury News has a pictorial about grinding poverty in India done by John Boudreau and Dai Sugano. This heartbreaking pictorial illustrates the extent of the problem that India faces, a problem that could potentially be very destabilizing and put the entire society at the risk of widespread chaos and violence.
In the Musharraf period, one of the main reasons for the economic growth was a drastic reduction in bureaucratic controls in the economic sector, thereby increasing the participation of the business and service sectors. This in turn led to a rising middle class, increasing consumer spending leading to an economic progress spiral in the classical fashion. Any other country to have put this process in place would have striven to maintain it at all costs. Unfortunately this did not happen, primarily because of the self destructive mindset of some influential segments of our population and the naivete of our leadership.
Let me try to explain this viewpoint from a historical perspective.
Broadly, the global economy can be divided into two stages, a) pre industrial revolution and b) post industrial revolution.
The pre industrial revolution systems are natural resource based or traditional agriculture based. In both these systems the sustenance of human beings is mainly dependent on natural growth of food products.
The post industrial age economy is human resource based, where human sustenance has become dependent on the products of human effort. Essentially this means that manufacturing and services sectors become the primary source for people to get their food and shelter.
The main issue in Pakistan as well as in other third world countries is the transformation of a society from a pre-industrial revolution natural resource and agriculture based, to a post industrial revolution human resource based economy. This transformation becomes necessary when the population of a country increases to a level which exceeds the population support capacity of the traditional economic system. This transformation is generally not achievable through unbridled democracy as it is against the interests of the majority of the population in its earlier stages. Therefore, this change has to be put in place by the ruling establishment, provided they're a) conscious of this fact and b) willing to effect this change smoothly for the betterment of future generations. Once this transformation is achieved, then democracy becomes a sustainable system of governance.
Lets see how this transformation has been achieved in various parts of the world: 1- In the US this was achieved through the civil war of the 1860s. The resistance of the southern states to this transition was so strong that they declared independence and a war was needed to resolve the issue. To end that matter for ever, Gen. Sherman (the commander of the Union forces), totally burnt and destroyed a 50 mile wide strip of land all the way from Atlanta down to the Gulf of Mexico, to prevent the two sides of the Confederacy from ever regrouping. After that democracy has functioned smoothly. 2- In Western Europe, this was achieved over a longer period starting from the French Revolution and lasting till around the mid-19th century. After the French Revolution, the Western European monarchies developed working relationships with the emerging capitalist classes, gradually removing the aristocracy from positions of authority; this policy avoided revolutions elsewhere. As the capitalist economy consolidated, democracy took over as the system of governance. 3- In Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia, this transformation took place with the Russian Revolution in 1918. Although USSR finished off in the 1990s, but the transformation to the post industrial revolution human resource based system was completed. This is the real achievement of the Russian Revolution and the succeeding governments in the USSR. Democracy may now become and sustain as the system of governance in these countries. 4- Far East. All the countries achieved or are achieving this transformation through home grown leadership committed to this change. The most prominent example of course being China. The recent Thai developments indicate a growing awareness that democracy cannot achieve this change and in fact becomes an impediment. Countries like S. Korea and Singapore are past that phase and gradually adopting to democracy.
Now lets see some other examples which confirm the same principle: 1- Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait etc. Since their oil production generates the requisite funds to run the country, there is no imminent need for this transition. So the political system of kingdoms is pretty stable and surviving. Even then the kings are effecting a transformation of their countries to modern manufacturing and service sector based economies, with a view to future betterment. 2- India is trying to achieve this transition through democracy but the progress (if really there is any) is extremely slow and painful. This is not very evident to the world because Indians are very good at presenting a bright picture of themselves, but the fact is that they have a pitiably small industrial base and not being able to expand it to the needs of its populace. Their per capita GNP is much lower than Pakistan, a country with directionless politics and a total lack of awareness.
I think our civil society, media and political leadership should understand that elections is a means, not an end in itself. The end is governance through which the national objectives are achieved. In our case, like all third world countries, this objective is to achieve the transformation from agriculture or natural resource based systems (which cannot sustain the increased population), to a modern human resource based system to have a large enough manufacturing and service sector base to support the increased population. Any government (or form of government) which furthers this change is constructive for the society, and those retarding this change are destructive. Unfortunately our parliamentary form of governance invariable always ends up doing the latter function.
A couple of recent examples demonstrating this awareness in some parts of the world: 1- In China, the industrial base covers only about 30% of the population and is dominating the world economies. The Chinese are trying to expand it ruthlessly without any consideration to the immediate concerns of the rural population. However, this policy will benefit the next generations of the rural populace. Had the Chinese adopted democracy 20 years back, they'd probably still be in a quagmire like other third world nations. 2- In Thailand, the military coup of 2006 was supported by the King, a new constitution was adopted that reduced the power of the parliament, increased the power of bureaucracy (incl judiciary) which is now used by the King (aided by army) to keep the transformation on track even if the elected leaders representing the decadent economic classes try to stall it. As you can see various components of the establishment (the royalty, army, businessmen, professionals, bureaucracy, traders etc) collectively trying to steer the country towards its objective. Whether they succeed or fail is another issue that time will tell, but they're at least trying to do that. So I think the Thai case is a very practical demonstration of the limitations of democracy in a developing country. In our country, except for the royalty, other sections are there similarly but fighting each other for the sake of elections, thereby always handing over power to the decadent classes who, to their credit I must say, are generally willing to adapt to the change when thrust upon them. PML-Q type politicians are typical of our rural establishment and have always been willing to adapt to the changing world, right from the 1960s era of industrialization to the Musharraf era economic growth. The biggest resistance comes from the urban middle classes who, in fact, would be the beneficiaries of this transformation. So I would call it a naive thinking to the extent of downright stupidity on their part. I think that's because the western media has hammered democracy into our heads as a matter of belief not to be questioned like religious belief systems. We should not blame them for doing so as that's the right system for the level of development of their society. Instead we should use try to understand things in a better way, and not get carried away by the herd mentality.
A powerful and aware middle class essential for true democratic governance in Pakistan or anywhere else, is the effect of this economic transformation, and cannot be its cause; the middle classes of our country, in particular, should understand this fact. A real participatory democracy to serve all Pakistanis with appropriate checks and balances, can only be expected after that.
Alex Jones of Infowars.com sees the burgeoning India-Israel-US axis and talks about it in the aftermath of Mumbai. Jones is a controversial American journalist who challenges the news reporting and editorial policies of mainstream Western media. He is a strong critic of the "war on terror" and his detractors accuse him of spreading disinformation on behalf of the "terrorists" and "the enemies of Israel and India". He has been featured as a prominent figure of the "9/11 Truth Movement" in such publications as The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Popular Mechanics. He has appeared on Good Morning America, 20/20 Downtown, 60 Minutes, The Discovery Channel, The History Channel, Fox News, TalkSport (UK), Russia Today, Channel 4 (UK), A&E, America's "most widely listened to late night radio show", Coast to Coast AM, C-Span, and many other venues. Patrick Beech of the Austin-American Statesman has described Jones as "an absolutely riveting television presence."
The key assertions in the following Alex Jones and Webster Tarpley video are:
1. Israel has been active in Kashmir. Israeli Army Chief General Mizrahi visited Kashmir in September, 2008.
3. India's Anti-terror chief Hemant Kirkare was among the first to be killed in Mumbai.
4. The RSS, a right-wing Hindu fascist organization, has been killing large numbers of Muslims for years in India. It wants BJP to benefit from Mumbai to win the next elections in 2009.
5. CIA has a major presence in FATA and it is recruiting mercenaries to commit terrorism in Pakistan. Pakistan should kick the CIA out of FATA.
6. Indian intelligence agency RAW is recruiting Afghans to attack inside Pakistan to destabilize it.
7. War in South Asia would mean a complete disaster for both India and Pakistan.
Here is Alex Jones and Webster Tarpley discussing the current post-Mumbai crisis in South Asia, deepening involvement of CIA and Israel, and the rising Hindu fanaticism in India:
