Published on Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 18:48 , Updated at Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 18:51
Source : CNBC-TV18
Elizabeth Flock, Forbes-Network18
With no end in sight to the current downturn, countries are being forced on the back foot, and their heads are talking bail-out deals. Down and out, people are beginning to wonder whether there are any places left which might provide them with a safe haven.
The good news is, yes, there are. We have cherry-picked six places which are relatively out of the danger zone. While the rest of the world might be going through a trough, these six hotspots offer a ray of hope.
1. Faroe Islands, Denmark
If you’ve heard of the Faroe Islands, it’s most likely because of the $52-million loan they made out to Iceland in October. A tiny Danish province, it is a self-governing group of 18 islands strung out between Iceland and Norway. The Faroe Islands haven’t always been so independent though. In the early 1990s, the autonomous region faced an economic crisis pushing it to the edge of bankruptcy, inducing many residents to move to the Danish mainland.
The 48,000 Faroese people left may now have it better than the rest of us. The economy of the Faroe Islands has rebounded in the last few years and in 2006, unemployment was at 3% in the province, one of the lowest rates in Europe.
While the region’s main revenues come from the fishing industry, petroleum recently found in the Faroese area has promised an alternate source of prosperity.
For newcomers to the Faroe Islands, copious jobs await. Because many young students move to Denmark after high school, leaving behind only the elderly, the Faroese have for the past few years been left with hundreds of job vacancies. Any takers?
2. Washington D.C., United States
Call it irony, but the country which got us into the mess, the US, offers a strong contender for the safe haven spot: Washington D.C.
With a hefty workforce of 600,000 residents and a daytime population that bulges to more than one million, the city would be vulnerable to the continuous hacking of American jobs, except for one thing: most of the city is fuelled by the US government.
The federal government accounts for 27% of the jobs in the district, which houses the centres of the executive, legislative, and judicial branch. That’s not counting 172 foreign embassies, and companies responsible for defense and homeland security. Add to that mix lawyers, lobbyists, accountants and journalists that are attached to the government.
As of May 2008, the Washington Metropolitan Area had an unemployment rate of 3.5% (close to that of the Faroese), which was the lowest rate among the 40 largest metro areas in the US, and lower than the national average unemployment rate during that period, which stood at 5.2%.
Some suggest that the crisis may even create a surfeit of jobs in the capital, as the Federal government hires Wall Street experts to help out. The virtually free District of Columbia Public School system plus the cheap Metrorail public transport system also makes the city more liveable than others in the US during the downturn.
If you still want to be a part of the global hysteria, while you’re there, you can always visit Recession’s Restaurant (L St, NW # 1, Washington, DC 20036, United States, +1 202-296-6686) for a quick dose. Then return to your stable government job and thank the stars for the arrival of your salary so you can pay for that big lunch you had.
3. Larsemann Hills, Antarctica
With the world’s blood already running cold, Antarctica with its record low temperatures of -89 degrees Celsius may not seem worthy of this list. But the place has its merits. There are 44 permanent research bases maintained by 18 countries here. Many of these are manned year-round and the number of people on the continent varies from approximately 5,000 in summer to 1,000 in winter. And like in Washington D.C., government jobs aren’t being cut.
India too maintains a permanent research base, Maitri, on the continent. A new research base was commissioned at Larsemann Hills in East Antarctica, to be installed by 2009. This will eventually replace Maitri.
Larsemann Hills area is also among the most inhabitable on the continent. It has favourable drinking water and topography for living conditions. And activities and research have not been affected by the slowdown.
Antarctica has no government of its own, and belongs to no country. The only recession the continent has ever seen is its West Antarctic glacier, which has been attributed to global warming. For now, it might be the best place to take refuge from the meltdown on the other six continents.
4. Non-Starbucks-Consuming Countries
Daniel Gross, an American journalist, offers a simple theory to identify which countries will be most affected by the economic downturn. His “Starbucks Theory of International Economics”, published on Slate.com, states that more the number of Starbucks outlets a country has, more the likelihood of it being hit by the recession.
He argues that Starbucks personifies the crisis—triggered by the subprime and credit bubbles—because the coffee chain followed new housing developments to open new outlets, and became a meeting place for real estate brokers and clients. He calls the caffeinated giant, “fuel for the boom, the caffeine that enabled deal jockeys to stay up all hours offering papers for CDOs (collateralized debt obligations), and helping mortgage brokers work overtime processing dubious loan documents.”
According to him, countries with more Starbucks outlets are better connected to the global economy. Such countries have seen businesspeople fritter away money on over-priced coffee, and are willing to adopt an American style of business over their own.
So, places that don’t have Starbucks are safe havens.
Gross cites Africa, with just three Starbucks, as a place where banks have not failed. Central America, which has zero Starbucks, has had few bailouts. Argentina, at long last a stalwart economy, has only one store. Italy, with zero Starbucks outlets, has a banking sector that isn't very operational globally, and has seen little disaster.
What about India? Gross doesn’t touch on that. While Starbucks was keen to enter India, it withdrew its application from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, which approves foreign investments into the country, because the chain wanted a majority holding structure (overseas brands in India can’t hold more than 51%).
But with the rise of a caffeinated middle class which meets at the Café Coffee Days and Baristas for a coffee 15 times more expensive than roadside tea, market experts say Starbucks can’t ignore India for long. With the recession deepening and lengthening, and Starbuck’s eye on India, perhaps it’s time to move to a remote village Starbucks won’t touch.
5. Nagorno Karabakh
In a recent speech in Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh encouraged banks to provide liquidity to ensure there were no disruptions in economic activity. This came just days after the Sensex fell below 10,000.
Contrast to Nagorno Karabakh, a remote enclave located in Azerbaijan near the Armenian border. Though the province is disputed by the two countries, it unilaterally declared itself an independent republic in 1991. In a recent speech, Nagorno Karabakh’s Prime Minister Arayik Harutyunyan said that despite the reduced cash flow from outside the enclave, the volume of bank deposits in the republic are actually growing.
Nagorno Karabakh may be unaffected because of its essentially isolated business sector, which is largely state-run. But Harutyunyan has a lot to be happy about. Not only has the volume of deposits in banks gone up 22.7 percent from January to October, but the volume of loans credited by commercial banks also went up by 55.6 percent during that period. While giant banks collapse around the world, from the US to Iceland, an Armenia-based AmeriaBank just opened its first affiliate in Karabakh early in November. The total capital of the bank is 17 billion Armenian dram ($56,650,000).
Retail sales are also up in the region: 7.7 percent in the first nine months of 2008 over the previous year’s indicator for the same time period. Compare this to November in the US, where retail chains saw the worst monthly sales in a decade.
Total income in Nagorno Karabakh from January to September of this year has grown 22.2 percent compared to the same time period in 2007, according to the National Statistic Service. GDP share per head has also grown.
At the opening ceremony of AmeriaBank, RA Central Bank Chairman Artur Javadyan said Armenia’s banking system is stable and overcapitalised. He also said: “As of today we have no problems at all.” Bold words, but reassuring ones for anyone looking for a safe place to hide.
6. Bhutan
If you don’t believe that any place is truly safe from the effects of the recession, you are probably right. The answer may be not to focus on measuring wealth. The Kingdom of Bhutan thinks so. Instead of measuring Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the country lives by an index of Gross National Happiness (GNH).
The GNH index was created in 1972 by the then king Jigme Singye Wangchuck, after continued reports on Bhutan’s ramshackle economy. The country soon stopped measuring how productive its citizens were through GDP. Instead, the small Himalayan nation now lives only by the measure of how happy its citizens are.
The index is based on the idea that the true development of a country cannot be just material development, but spiritual development as well—an approach that befits Bhutan’s Buddhist culture.
There are four pillars of GNH: the promotion of equitable and sustainable socio-economic development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and establishment of good governance.
Bhutan is not a refuge from financial woes. The country has a very low GDP. In 2007, Bhutan had the second fastest growing economy in the world, with an annual economic growth rate of 22.4 percent. But most of this was due to the commission of the Tata Hydroelectricity project. The GNH, on the other hand, is succeeding in its ambition. According to Business Week in 2006, a global survey conducted by the University of Leicester rated Bhutan the happiest country in Asia and the eighth happiest country in the world. India ranks 125th. If you can’t beat the financial crisis, at least in Bhutan you can beat the recession blues.
Elizabeth Flock is an associate reporter with the new business magazine to be launched by Network18 in association with Forbes, USA.
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/features/far-from-the-maddening-crisis/373358
Thursday, January 1, 2009
What We Did Right In 2008
Published on Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 19:01 , Updated at Thu, Jan 01, 2009 at 09:16
Source : Network18 business magazine
Elizabeth Flock, Forbes-Network18
Year 2008 was rough. It was a year where past excesses and lack of foresight led to perhaps the greatest recession in history; a year of reorganisation of world powers; and a year that ended in terrorist attacks on India that called into question the effectiveness and adequacy of our government, media, police and intelligence forces. The question stands—did we do anything right?
A fiscal cushion
The lack of foresight across the board—among economics experts down to the common man—is perhaps one of the most startling aspects of the global financial crisis. But taking a closer look at the Indian economy and the fiscal policies of the past year, it seems not everything was done in error or without prescience.
Ajit Ranade, Chief Economist with the Aditya Birla group, says the expansionary budget unveiled by then Finance
Minister P. Chidambaram in February was a measure that helped stave off some of the crisis.
When Chidambaram announced the budget, it was called ‘populist’ and the BJP said it was a ‘recipe for long term economic disaster’. The budget increased expenditure targets on rural development and education, cancelled loans made to farmers, and offered tax relief to low-income groups.
But Ranade says the criticisms were off-target. “The expansionary fiscal spending had impact on rural purchasing power. No one anticipated what was coming, but in hindsight this looks like it helped us with the slowdown,” he says.
Chidambaram’s budget increased banks’ target loan disbursals to the agricultural sector by Rs. 2.8 trillion ($70.52 billion), and Rs. 160 billion were allocated for employment in rural areas. The health sector allowance increased by 15 percent to Rs. 165.34 billion.
The budget also raised taxes on short-term investments and brought the mutual fund industry under the tax service net. At the time, this hurt market sentiment.
However, looking back, the budget provided a fiscal cushion, says Ranade. “While there was a slowdown in global markets, domestic markets kept up some momentum. We have seen our second quarter GDP show 7.6 percent growth, which was higher than expected. The budget might have mitigated some of the effects and allowed for this growth.”
The realty bubble predicted
While much of the world seems caught by surprise by the popping of the real estate bubble, Ranade says the monetary policy and stance of the RBI proved to be in the right direction in terms of the real estate market.
In December 2007, RBI Deputy Governor, Rakesh Mohan, warned against the real estate bubble in his address at Yale University on India’s financial sector reforms. Mohan said that the elevated realty prices along with non-transparency in the real estate sector might lead to an “asset bubble” and pose risks to the banking system.
He also said that the backlog in housing, growing income, and more urbanisation meant a continued demand for housing and pressure on real estate prices over the next year. “Such developments can easily generate bubbles in the real estate market because of problems in the elasticity of supply and information asymmetries,” he warned.
Mohan didn’t just talk; the RBI did something about it.
Ranade says that the RBI started tightening their policies much earlier than other parts of the world. “The RBI warned against the real estate bubble two years by starting to increase the risk rate on commercial real estate loans. They also put a cap on excessive lending to real estate.”
The policies of the RBI may have also prevented the subprime crisis in India, says Ranade, which is a minimal category in this country compared to the US.
Shift towards a multi-polar world
At a time when the global community is critical of US’ excesses in Wall Street and there is talk of the dollar ceasing to be the dominant world currency, a radical reorganising of world power seems more likely.
This unexpected result of the meltdown may be something else 2008 did right. The G-20 summit in Washington in November to discuss the global financial crisis put India and China centre stage and gave the BRIC countries more of a say as the world powers recognised the need for a global coordinated response to the crisis. The multi-polar world America has dreaded since the end of the Cold War (Vice President Dick Cheney and former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz have repeatedly sworn to prevent it at all costs) seems to be in the not-too-distant future.
The United States National Intelligence Community survey of the world of 2025 in its report, “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World”, confirms this. The survey found that the US was losing dominance, and China and India were lining up to fill its shoes.
In addition to the G-20 summit and other achievements such as the nuclear deal, India has proved itself in 2008 by breaking records. In April India sent 10 satellites into orbit in a single launch, setting the new world record. And at the Olympics in Beijing it received its first gold medal.
With the collapse of established financial systems and the approaching departure of President Bush, records may not be India’s primary expression of clout. As the inflexibility and egotism of larger countries like the US tempers, India’s global role may continue to expand rapidly as it did at the G-20.
Yes we can
The election of Barack Obama may be crucial to the way world powers reorganise themselves. Countries the world over are not unhappy about it. In an Economist magazine survey of an imaginary global electoral ballot, Obama got the world vote 9115 to 203.
While President Bush may have been more pro-India than any president in US history, most notably with the passage of the nuclear deal and his policies on outsourcing, Obama may prove just as favourable. While there were initial concerns about his views on outsourcing and his promise to intervene in Jammu and Kashmir, he has since toned down those pledges.
Shanthie Mariet D’Souza, Associate Fellow at the Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses, New Delhi, acknowledges that there have been problem areas, but says that with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, there will be better understanding of these issues.
D’Souza also thinks there will not be a drastic change from the previous administration. “We feel that the new Obama administration will understand the strategic issue in South Asia well because Obama is interested in balance of power. He talks of change from a unilateral policy to a multilateral one, including the stand on Iran and negotiation in Afghanistan, and we think he will work to achieve that.”
Obama’s foreign policy advisor, Wendy Sherman, has stressed the future president’s plans for an overhaul in the interface between the US and the rest of the world. “He is going to engage with the world…with smart diplomacy, strong alliances and really bring America’s moral authority back into the world,” she says.
D’Souza says that despite Bush’s pro-India policies, the Obama administration is a welcome change because of a badly-managed Bush administration. “Because Obama is open to different opinions, with intellectual curiosity to absorb different things, we think he can make real change. It’s both his team and vision he has.”
2009 will show whether Obama’s policies will be beneficial to India, and whether his pledges are bonafide. But judging the overwhelming global consensus in his favour, Obama’s victory may prove to be something America did right this year.
A mature reaction to cross-border terror
More than the election of a new American president, or the reports from intelligence agencies indicating a reorganization of global power, the recent terrorist attacks on Mumbai have shaken up the world. The attacks, which battered Indian nationals and Western visitors, have forced the West to take more than a cursory look at India.
Visits by Condoleeza Rice, and officials from the CIA, FBI and NYPD in response to the attacks illustrate the US’ understanding that a closer relationship with Pakistan than India may need to change.
But what has the Indian government done right in light of these attacks? Ashok K. Behuria, Research Fellow at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, says the policy-makers have reacted in the best way they could.
While many Mumbaikars are angry about the government’s inaction thus far, Behuria says they have been right in advocating restraint. “The government is not doing nothing. They are discussing a lot of options right now: more coordination among security forces, and the possibility of a homeland security agency. Paranoia has set in, but the people at the policy making level have their heads in the right place.”
Devyani Srivastava, Research Officer at the New Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), agrees. “The diplomatic reaction of the government displays a sort of maturity. They have been able to separate the terrorism issue with other aspects of the relationship of Pakistan and India, which is difficult.”
Many would take issue with this notion, but the next few weeks will prove if the government can present a coherent, effective response to the situation.
The nuclear deal: New-found power
However the policy-makers react to the attacks, one thing they have already achieved in 2008 is the passage of the US-India nuclear deal.
The bilateral agreement for nuclear cooperation between the two countries, exchanging the separation of civil and nuclear facilities in India for full civil nuclear cooperation from the US, was a landmark accord for India after years of being ostracized for not having signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The waiver by the Nuclear Supplier’s Group that followed, allowing India to access civilian nuclear technology, was crucial.
Dr. S. Chandrasekharan, Director of the South Asia Analysis Group, says, “We had hardly done 3,000 megawatts and now by 2020 we may achieve the 20,000 megawatts goal. As our economy grows at 8 or 9 percent, this added power is essential. We had the money and expertise, all we needed was the power from countries willing to give it to us, and now we have it.”
The benefits of the deal extend to newly shared facilities of commercial aircraft manufacture, ship building, factories for power plants, steel making plants, mining and drilling hardware, petroleum and petrochemical plant building facilities. The deal also means availability of the latest technology for nuclear power generation, as well as offshoot benefits for markets which are related to nuclear commerce. New business worth $100 billion for companies at home and abroad over the next decade has been estimated as a result of the deal.
Srivastava of the IPCS says the geopolitical effects of the deal have also been big. She cites the greatest benefit to be the confidence the deal generated about Indian diplomacy and its ability for negotiation.
Chandrasekharan says India has joined the international mainstream as a result of the deal. Experts say India will be less isolated, with a new voice in forums like the UN, WTO, and world monetary lending institutions. India may become a member of G-8. And there will be more frequent inter-government exchanges on matters of mutual interest.
But Chandrasekharan warns against being too optimistic. “It’s too early to say how this will change things. Nuclear power doesn’t come in a day. Of course the general economy will improve because it will sustain economic development. Now we are getting some of the energy needed but this doesn’t completely fill the need. We have to look into other sources of energy.”
* * *
The actions of the finance minister and the RBI, the G-20 summit and the election of a new American president, the response of the Indian government to terrorist attacks and the passage of an agreement for nuclear power—2008 may not have been all pandemonium and crisis. We may have done some things right, as a country, and as a world. But like the nuclear deal, it may be too early to tell.
Elizabeth Flock is an associate reporter with the new business magazine to be launched by Network 18 in association with Forbes, USA.
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/the-good-in-a-bad-year-things-we-did-right-in-2008/81701-3.html
Source : Network18 business magazine
Elizabeth Flock, Forbes-Network18
Year 2008 was rough. It was a year where past excesses and lack of foresight led to perhaps the greatest recession in history; a year of reorganisation of world powers; and a year that ended in terrorist attacks on India that called into question the effectiveness and adequacy of our government, media, police and intelligence forces. The question stands—did we do anything right?
A fiscal cushion
The lack of foresight across the board—among economics experts down to the common man—is perhaps one of the most startling aspects of the global financial crisis. But taking a closer look at the Indian economy and the fiscal policies of the past year, it seems not everything was done in error or without prescience.
Ajit Ranade, Chief Economist with the Aditya Birla group, says the expansionary budget unveiled by then Finance
Minister P. Chidambaram in February was a measure that helped stave off some of the crisis.
When Chidambaram announced the budget, it was called ‘populist’ and the BJP said it was a ‘recipe for long term economic disaster’. The budget increased expenditure targets on rural development and education, cancelled loans made to farmers, and offered tax relief to low-income groups.
But Ranade says the criticisms were off-target. “The expansionary fiscal spending had impact on rural purchasing power. No one anticipated what was coming, but in hindsight this looks like it helped us with the slowdown,” he says.
Chidambaram’s budget increased banks’ target loan disbursals to the agricultural sector by Rs. 2.8 trillion ($70.52 billion), and Rs. 160 billion were allocated for employment in rural areas. The health sector allowance increased by 15 percent to Rs. 165.34 billion.
The budget also raised taxes on short-term investments and brought the mutual fund industry under the tax service net. At the time, this hurt market sentiment.
However, looking back, the budget provided a fiscal cushion, says Ranade. “While there was a slowdown in global markets, domestic markets kept up some momentum. We have seen our second quarter GDP show 7.6 percent growth, which was higher than expected. The budget might have mitigated some of the effects and allowed for this growth.”
The realty bubble predicted
While much of the world seems caught by surprise by the popping of the real estate bubble, Ranade says the monetary policy and stance of the RBI proved to be in the right direction in terms of the real estate market.
In December 2007, RBI Deputy Governor, Rakesh Mohan, warned against the real estate bubble in his address at Yale University on India’s financial sector reforms. Mohan said that the elevated realty prices along with non-transparency in the real estate sector might lead to an “asset bubble” and pose risks to the banking system.
He also said that the backlog in housing, growing income, and more urbanisation meant a continued demand for housing and pressure on real estate prices over the next year. “Such developments can easily generate bubbles in the real estate market because of problems in the elasticity of supply and information asymmetries,” he warned.
Mohan didn’t just talk; the RBI did something about it.
Ranade says that the RBI started tightening their policies much earlier than other parts of the world. “The RBI warned against the real estate bubble two years by starting to increase the risk rate on commercial real estate loans. They also put a cap on excessive lending to real estate.”
The policies of the RBI may have also prevented the subprime crisis in India, says Ranade, which is a minimal category in this country compared to the US.
Shift towards a multi-polar world
At a time when the global community is critical of US’ excesses in Wall Street and there is talk of the dollar ceasing to be the dominant world currency, a radical reorganising of world power seems more likely.
This unexpected result of the meltdown may be something else 2008 did right. The G-20 summit in Washington in November to discuss the global financial crisis put India and China centre stage and gave the BRIC countries more of a say as the world powers recognised the need for a global coordinated response to the crisis. The multi-polar world America has dreaded since the end of the Cold War (Vice President Dick Cheney and former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz have repeatedly sworn to prevent it at all costs) seems to be in the not-too-distant future.
The United States National Intelligence Community survey of the world of 2025 in its report, “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World”, confirms this. The survey found that the US was losing dominance, and China and India were lining up to fill its shoes.
In addition to the G-20 summit and other achievements such as the nuclear deal, India has proved itself in 2008 by breaking records. In April India sent 10 satellites into orbit in a single launch, setting the new world record. And at the Olympics in Beijing it received its first gold medal.
With the collapse of established financial systems and the approaching departure of President Bush, records may not be India’s primary expression of clout. As the inflexibility and egotism of larger countries like the US tempers, India’s global role may continue to expand rapidly as it did at the G-20.
Yes we can
The election of Barack Obama may be crucial to the way world powers reorganise themselves. Countries the world over are not unhappy about it. In an Economist magazine survey of an imaginary global electoral ballot, Obama got the world vote 9115 to 203.
While President Bush may have been more pro-India than any president in US history, most notably with the passage of the nuclear deal and his policies on outsourcing, Obama may prove just as favourable. While there were initial concerns about his views on outsourcing and his promise to intervene in Jammu and Kashmir, he has since toned down those pledges.
Shanthie Mariet D’Souza, Associate Fellow at the Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses, New Delhi, acknowledges that there have been problem areas, but says that with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, there will be better understanding of these issues.
D’Souza also thinks there will not be a drastic change from the previous administration. “We feel that the new Obama administration will understand the strategic issue in South Asia well because Obama is interested in balance of power. He talks of change from a unilateral policy to a multilateral one, including the stand on Iran and negotiation in Afghanistan, and we think he will work to achieve that.”
Obama’s foreign policy advisor, Wendy Sherman, has stressed the future president’s plans for an overhaul in the interface between the US and the rest of the world. “He is going to engage with the world…with smart diplomacy, strong alliances and really bring America’s moral authority back into the world,” she says.
D’Souza says that despite Bush’s pro-India policies, the Obama administration is a welcome change because of a badly-managed Bush administration. “Because Obama is open to different opinions, with intellectual curiosity to absorb different things, we think he can make real change. It’s both his team and vision he has.”
2009 will show whether Obama’s policies will be beneficial to India, and whether his pledges are bonafide. But judging the overwhelming global consensus in his favour, Obama’s victory may prove to be something America did right this year.
A mature reaction to cross-border terror
More than the election of a new American president, or the reports from intelligence agencies indicating a reorganization of global power, the recent terrorist attacks on Mumbai have shaken up the world. The attacks, which battered Indian nationals and Western visitors, have forced the West to take more than a cursory look at India.
Visits by Condoleeza Rice, and officials from the CIA, FBI and NYPD in response to the attacks illustrate the US’ understanding that a closer relationship with Pakistan than India may need to change.
But what has the Indian government done right in light of these attacks? Ashok K. Behuria, Research Fellow at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, says the policy-makers have reacted in the best way they could.
While many Mumbaikars are angry about the government’s inaction thus far, Behuria says they have been right in advocating restraint. “The government is not doing nothing. They are discussing a lot of options right now: more coordination among security forces, and the possibility of a homeland security agency. Paranoia has set in, but the people at the policy making level have their heads in the right place.”
Devyani Srivastava, Research Officer at the New Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), agrees. “The diplomatic reaction of the government displays a sort of maturity. They have been able to separate the terrorism issue with other aspects of the relationship of Pakistan and India, which is difficult.”
Many would take issue with this notion, but the next few weeks will prove if the government can present a coherent, effective response to the situation.
The nuclear deal: New-found power
However the policy-makers react to the attacks, one thing they have already achieved in 2008 is the passage of the US-India nuclear deal.
The bilateral agreement for nuclear cooperation between the two countries, exchanging the separation of civil and nuclear facilities in India for full civil nuclear cooperation from the US, was a landmark accord for India after years of being ostracized for not having signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The waiver by the Nuclear Supplier’s Group that followed, allowing India to access civilian nuclear technology, was crucial.
Dr. S. Chandrasekharan, Director of the South Asia Analysis Group, says, “We had hardly done 3,000 megawatts and now by 2020 we may achieve the 20,000 megawatts goal. As our economy grows at 8 or 9 percent, this added power is essential. We had the money and expertise, all we needed was the power from countries willing to give it to us, and now we have it.”
The benefits of the deal extend to newly shared facilities of commercial aircraft manufacture, ship building, factories for power plants, steel making plants, mining and drilling hardware, petroleum and petrochemical plant building facilities. The deal also means availability of the latest technology for nuclear power generation, as well as offshoot benefits for markets which are related to nuclear commerce. New business worth $100 billion for companies at home and abroad over the next decade has been estimated as a result of the deal.
Srivastava of the IPCS says the geopolitical effects of the deal have also been big. She cites the greatest benefit to be the confidence the deal generated about Indian diplomacy and its ability for negotiation.
Chandrasekharan says India has joined the international mainstream as a result of the deal. Experts say India will be less isolated, with a new voice in forums like the UN, WTO, and world monetary lending institutions. India may become a member of G-8. And there will be more frequent inter-government exchanges on matters of mutual interest.
But Chandrasekharan warns against being too optimistic. “It’s too early to say how this will change things. Nuclear power doesn’t come in a day. Of course the general economy will improve because it will sustain economic development. Now we are getting some of the energy needed but this doesn’t completely fill the need. We have to look into other sources of energy.”
* * *
The actions of the finance minister and the RBI, the G-20 summit and the election of a new American president, the response of the Indian government to terrorist attacks and the passage of an agreement for nuclear power—2008 may not have been all pandemonium and crisis. We may have done some things right, as a country, and as a world. But like the nuclear deal, it may be too early to tell.
Elizabeth Flock is an associate reporter with the new business magazine to be launched by Network 18 in association with Forbes, USA.
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/the-good-in-a-bad-year-things-we-did-right-in-2008/81701-3.html
Tough Love: Downers That Get You Up
Published on Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 19:05 , Updated at Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 19:12
Source : Network18 business magazine
Elizabeth Flock, Forbes-Network18
Experts have never been able to figure out why people seek out art they know will be painful. They have never been able to really explain why that sad love song feels so good, or why we enjoy a really good horror flick.
Some attribute it to the ‘paradox of tragedy’, the philosophical discussion on why human beings derive pleasure from unpleasant emotions. David Hume addressed the paradox in his treatise ‘On Tragedy’. He argued that tragedy is pleasurable because the impulse of negative emotions is overpowered and converted into pleasure through the eloquence used to depict works of art.
The theories are multitude, but accepting Hume’s theory, let us say that the works of art below succeeded in their eloquence, such that these tragic works are in fact pleasurable. These works of art appear to be downers but really they make you feel good.
And as the world, your job, or your bank account teeters on the edge of collapse, you might just need them.
ART
Anupam Sud
Perhaps the finest printmaker alive in India today, Sud focuses on the tragic tensions between men and women. Yet in her unabashed representation of the nude body, there is an undeniable loveliness. As art critic Gayatri Sinha says, the bodies in Sud’s prints are “the only certainty in this shiftless world”.
Sud is a feminist without the pretensions of being one: displaying the male-female relationship as it really is, complete with exploitation, anguish and desire. It’s refreshing, actually. Sud conquers a physically demanding medium and we can all be gratified by the unabashed lines that etch bodies much like our own.
Best piece of art: “Cupid Playing”
Anupam Sud is on display at the Palette Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Modern Arts in New Delhi.
Banksy
Works of art from the nearly anonymous British graffiti artist have shown up in zoos, museums, building walls, and theme parks from London to New York to the Israeli West Bank. While Banksy does not hold exhibitions in commercial galleries, you can be sure to find him popping up where you least expect it.
Banksy is sometimes controversial, usually satirical, and always sticking it to the man.
He gives you a bit of an uneasy feeling when he subverts the corporate machine by sneaking his work into galleries (In 2004, Banksy hung a picture in the Louvre, Paris, that he had painted of the Mona Lisa with a yellow smiley face on it).
Yet then you remember that having a print of his recent graffiti work “One Nation Under CCTV” from Westminster, London, still makes you feel countercultural and avant-garde and cool.
Best piece of art: Nine images Banksy painted on the Israeli West Bank barrier in 2005 (including a painting of children digging a hole through the wall).
Banksy is on display wherever you least expect him.
MUSIC - THE BLUES
Why do the Blues—a style of music not only named for its use of blue notes, but also the phrase of dejection—feel so good? Below are some of the masters of melancholy, who for years have also provided the utmost listening pleasure.
B.B. King
No Blues list is complete without the ‘King of Blues’ himself, B.B. King. The American guitarist and singer-songwriter defined the genre with his penchant for improvisation, complex string blends and left hand vibrato.
The name of King’s guitar, Lucille, comes from near-tragedy-cum-pleasure. In the mid-50s, King was performing at a show in Arkansas when a fight broke out, spilling over a kerosene lamp and starting a fire. King realised his $30 guitar was inside and rushed back into save it, narrowly escaping with his life. When he found out the fight was started by a girl named Lucille, he named his guitar after her, and played the guitar for the greater part of his career.
King’s career was indeed long. In 1956 alone, B.B. and his band played 342 one-night stands. Total, King has played 15,000 performances. And he is still performing today.
Best album: “The Thrill is Gone”
Best song: “Everyday I have the blues”
Lyrics excerpt:
Everyday, everyday I have the blues
Oh nobody loves me, nobody seems to care
Yes nobody loves me, nobody seems to care
Speaking of bad luck and trouble
Well you know I had my share
John Mayall
John Mayall, the skinny English counterpart to the black American blues performers, grew up listening to his father’s jazz collection and was drawn to the Blues—even its melancholy sound gave him great satisfaction.
Mayall has been around for 50 years and collaborated with a plethora of famous instrumentalists, including Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, and Mick Fleetwood. On Mayall’s 1967 album “A Hard Road”, he is assisted by future Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green, who lends aching guitar solos and raw vocals. Mayall is at his best, using a glut of instruments to give you just that feeling.
Best album: “A Hard Road”.
Best songs: "Someday After a While (You'll Be Sorry)," "It’s Over”
Lyrics excerpt (“It’s Over”):
The way it came about it was a lonely night,
She’d been drinking, wasn’t treating me right
I went outside and I took her for a walk
Things fell through when we started to talk.
Janis Joplin
The girl personifies the Blues. Her struggles with heroin and depression were lifelong. In 1969, while she was with the Kozmic Blues band, she was allegedly shooting $200 worth of heroin per day. On the album released that year, “I Got Dem ’Ol Kozmic Blues Again, Mama”, you can hear her drugs induced more-throaty-than-usual vocals.
When she played with the band at Madison Square Garden that year, she was so drugged up people doubted she would make it. But make it she did and the CD went gold.
Best album: “I Got Dem ’Ol Kozmic Blues Again, Mama”
Best song: “Kozmic Blues”
Lyrics excerpt:
Time keeps movin' on
Friends they turn away
I keep movin' on
But I never found out why
I keep pushing so hard the dream
I keep tryin' to make it right
Through another lonely day, Whoaa
LITERATURE
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita is perverse, it is scandalous, and it is sometimes disgusting. But that doesn’t stop it from being delightful.
The story of an affair between sexual pervert Humbert Humbert and a 12-year-old Dolores Haze has never stopped being controversial from the time it hit the presses. The storyline appals you, and yet you cannot help revelling in Nabokov’s expert parodic style and his celebration of the absurd. The hero’s actions toward young Lolita are repulsive and yet you can’t look away. Perhaps some delight comes in knowing that in comparison at least you are normal. Or that this is only a story. Either way, Lolita will abhor and amuse for decades to come.
Best line: Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Catch-22 is a bitter novel. It traces the horror of war through one man, Yossarian’s, plight, as the carnage of his crew members and friends pile up, and as fear of his own death begins to consume him. Yet Heller’s dexterity of language makes this perhaps one of the most hilarious books ever written, using hyperbole to reveal the absurdity of war.
Heller’s eloquence was such that he coined a new phrase in the English language. A Catch-22, or artificial quandary where no real choice or solution exists, was played out many times throughout the book, most famously in the number of missions the soldiers must fly, ensuring they will never return home.
Readers will despair over Yossarian and the other men’s predicaments, yet delight in the outrageousness of situations. (For example, Yossarian’s late-night attempt to move the enemy line, demarcated by a string on a map, so as not to have to fly more missions).
Heller is at his best in Catch-22, exposing the bitterness of the war and the world, and then exaggerating it to make us laugh at it.
Best quote: There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle."
"That's some catch, that catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
FILM
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Directed by Milos Forman, from the book by Ken Kesey
The psychiatric hospital setting of the film, with most of the patients based on real-life mental patients Kesey had met when he worked in a hospital, gives great fodder for humour. But Forman’s realistic portrayal of insanity also gives you the chills.
The rebel McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, may be one of the most memorable in film history. Like all rebels, he is fights oppression and gathers a host of followers—here, his fellow patients. His desperate attempts to subvert Nurse Ratched, the tyrant of the hospital, and the reactions of the fellow patients become increasingly catastrophic and bizarre as the film progresses. But while McMurphy’s demise at the end of the film is tragic, it is not without first inspiring us all.
Best scene: McMurphy’s hilarious attempts to convince Nurse Ratched to rearrange the schedule so that the patients can watch the opener of the 1963 World Series Baseball game on TV.
Taxi Driver
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Taxi Driver was not the first in the cinema of loneliness, but it is one of the grittiest. Disillusioned New York City taxi driver Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is disturbing and yet the audience identifies with him. He is presented as a common man, a Vietnam vet plagued by insomnia, and we can all understand his disenchantment with the political machine and the city’s crime, as well as his inability to ably connect with other human beings.
As Bickle becomes increasingly more violent, you find yourself further in the coils of Scorsese’s story. At the end, it leaves you feeling bloodied, but you are glad for it.
Best scene: Travis Bickle practicing a threatening speech at home, saying into the mirror “You talkin’ to me?”
Elizabeth Flock is an associate reporter with the new business magazine to be launched by Network18 in association with Forbes, USA.
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/features/tough-lovedowners-that-get-you-up/373362
Source : Network18 business magazine
Elizabeth Flock, Forbes-Network18
Experts have never been able to figure out why people seek out art they know will be painful. They have never been able to really explain why that sad love song feels so good, or why we enjoy a really good horror flick.
Some attribute it to the ‘paradox of tragedy’, the philosophical discussion on why human beings derive pleasure from unpleasant emotions. David Hume addressed the paradox in his treatise ‘On Tragedy’. He argued that tragedy is pleasurable because the impulse of negative emotions is overpowered and converted into pleasure through the eloquence used to depict works of art.
The theories are multitude, but accepting Hume’s theory, let us say that the works of art below succeeded in their eloquence, such that these tragic works are in fact pleasurable. These works of art appear to be downers but really they make you feel good.
And as the world, your job, or your bank account teeters on the edge of collapse, you might just need them.
ART
Anupam Sud
Perhaps the finest printmaker alive in India today, Sud focuses on the tragic tensions between men and women. Yet in her unabashed representation of the nude body, there is an undeniable loveliness. As art critic Gayatri Sinha says, the bodies in Sud’s prints are “the only certainty in this shiftless world”.
Sud is a feminist without the pretensions of being one: displaying the male-female relationship as it really is, complete with exploitation, anguish and desire. It’s refreshing, actually. Sud conquers a physically demanding medium and we can all be gratified by the unabashed lines that etch bodies much like our own.
Best piece of art: “Cupid Playing”
Anupam Sud is on display at the Palette Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Modern Arts in New Delhi.
Banksy
Works of art from the nearly anonymous British graffiti artist have shown up in zoos, museums, building walls, and theme parks from London to New York to the Israeli West Bank. While Banksy does not hold exhibitions in commercial galleries, you can be sure to find him popping up where you least expect it.
Banksy is sometimes controversial, usually satirical, and always sticking it to the man.
He gives you a bit of an uneasy feeling when he subverts the corporate machine by sneaking his work into galleries (In 2004, Banksy hung a picture in the Louvre, Paris, that he had painted of the Mona Lisa with a yellow smiley face on it).
Yet then you remember that having a print of his recent graffiti work “One Nation Under CCTV” from Westminster, London, still makes you feel countercultural and avant-garde and cool.
Best piece of art: Nine images Banksy painted on the Israeli West Bank barrier in 2005 (including a painting of children digging a hole through the wall).
Banksy is on display wherever you least expect him.
MUSIC - THE BLUES
Why do the Blues—a style of music not only named for its use of blue notes, but also the phrase of dejection—feel so good? Below are some of the masters of melancholy, who for years have also provided the utmost listening pleasure.
B.B. King
No Blues list is complete without the ‘King of Blues’ himself, B.B. King. The American guitarist and singer-songwriter defined the genre with his penchant for improvisation, complex string blends and left hand vibrato.
The name of King’s guitar, Lucille, comes from near-tragedy-cum-pleasure. In the mid-50s, King was performing at a show in Arkansas when a fight broke out, spilling over a kerosene lamp and starting a fire. King realised his $30 guitar was inside and rushed back into save it, narrowly escaping with his life. When he found out the fight was started by a girl named Lucille, he named his guitar after her, and played the guitar for the greater part of his career.
King’s career was indeed long. In 1956 alone, B.B. and his band played 342 one-night stands. Total, King has played 15,000 performances. And he is still performing today.
Best album: “The Thrill is Gone”
Best song: “Everyday I have the blues”
Lyrics excerpt:
Everyday, everyday I have the blues
Oh nobody loves me, nobody seems to care
Yes nobody loves me, nobody seems to care
Speaking of bad luck and trouble
Well you know I had my share
John Mayall
John Mayall, the skinny English counterpart to the black American blues performers, grew up listening to his father’s jazz collection and was drawn to the Blues—even its melancholy sound gave him great satisfaction.
Mayall has been around for 50 years and collaborated with a plethora of famous instrumentalists, including Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, and Mick Fleetwood. On Mayall’s 1967 album “A Hard Road”, he is assisted by future Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green, who lends aching guitar solos and raw vocals. Mayall is at his best, using a glut of instruments to give you just that feeling.
Best album: “A Hard Road”.
Best songs: "Someday After a While (You'll Be Sorry)," "It’s Over”
Lyrics excerpt (“It’s Over”):
The way it came about it was a lonely night,
She’d been drinking, wasn’t treating me right
I went outside and I took her for a walk
Things fell through when we started to talk.
Janis Joplin
The girl personifies the Blues. Her struggles with heroin and depression were lifelong. In 1969, while she was with the Kozmic Blues band, she was allegedly shooting $200 worth of heroin per day. On the album released that year, “I Got Dem ’Ol Kozmic Blues Again, Mama”, you can hear her drugs induced more-throaty-than-usual vocals.
When she played with the band at Madison Square Garden that year, she was so drugged up people doubted she would make it. But make it she did and the CD went gold.
Best album: “I Got Dem ’Ol Kozmic Blues Again, Mama”
Best song: “Kozmic Blues”
Lyrics excerpt:
Time keeps movin' on
Friends they turn away
I keep movin' on
But I never found out why
I keep pushing so hard the dream
I keep tryin' to make it right
Through another lonely day, Whoaa
LITERATURE
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita is perverse, it is scandalous, and it is sometimes disgusting. But that doesn’t stop it from being delightful.
The story of an affair between sexual pervert Humbert Humbert and a 12-year-old Dolores Haze has never stopped being controversial from the time it hit the presses. The storyline appals you, and yet you cannot help revelling in Nabokov’s expert parodic style and his celebration of the absurd. The hero’s actions toward young Lolita are repulsive and yet you can’t look away. Perhaps some delight comes in knowing that in comparison at least you are normal. Or that this is only a story. Either way, Lolita will abhor and amuse for decades to come.
Best line: Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Catch-22 is a bitter novel. It traces the horror of war through one man, Yossarian’s, plight, as the carnage of his crew members and friends pile up, and as fear of his own death begins to consume him. Yet Heller’s dexterity of language makes this perhaps one of the most hilarious books ever written, using hyperbole to reveal the absurdity of war.
Heller’s eloquence was such that he coined a new phrase in the English language. A Catch-22, or artificial quandary where no real choice or solution exists, was played out many times throughout the book, most famously in the number of missions the soldiers must fly, ensuring they will never return home.
Readers will despair over Yossarian and the other men’s predicaments, yet delight in the outrageousness of situations. (For example, Yossarian’s late-night attempt to move the enemy line, demarcated by a string on a map, so as not to have to fly more missions).
Heller is at his best in Catch-22, exposing the bitterness of the war and the world, and then exaggerating it to make us laugh at it.
Best quote: There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle."
"That's some catch, that catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
FILM
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Directed by Milos Forman, from the book by Ken Kesey
The psychiatric hospital setting of the film, with most of the patients based on real-life mental patients Kesey had met when he worked in a hospital, gives great fodder for humour. But Forman’s realistic portrayal of insanity also gives you the chills.
The rebel McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, may be one of the most memorable in film history. Like all rebels, he is fights oppression and gathers a host of followers—here, his fellow patients. His desperate attempts to subvert Nurse Ratched, the tyrant of the hospital, and the reactions of the fellow patients become increasingly catastrophic and bizarre as the film progresses. But while McMurphy’s demise at the end of the film is tragic, it is not without first inspiring us all.
Best scene: McMurphy’s hilarious attempts to convince Nurse Ratched to rearrange the schedule so that the patients can watch the opener of the 1963 World Series Baseball game on TV.
Taxi Driver
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Taxi Driver was not the first in the cinema of loneliness, but it is one of the grittiest. Disillusioned New York City taxi driver Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is disturbing and yet the audience identifies with him. He is presented as a common man, a Vietnam vet plagued by insomnia, and we can all understand his disenchantment with the political machine and the city’s crime, as well as his inability to ably connect with other human beings.
As Bickle becomes increasingly more violent, you find yourself further in the coils of Scorsese’s story. At the end, it leaves you feeling bloodied, but you are glad for it.
Best scene: Travis Bickle practicing a threatening speech at home, saying into the mirror “You talkin’ to me?”
Elizabeth Flock is an associate reporter with the new business magazine to be launched by Network18 in association with Forbes, USA.
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/features/tough-lovedowners-that-get-you-up/373362
The Ant And The Grasshopper: A Modern Winter's Tale
Published on Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 19:22 , Updated at Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 19:29
Source : Network18 business magazine
Elizabeth Flock, Forbes-Network18
How the ant learnt to save
When I enter Hotel Shashikant in Andheri East, it is lunchtime. A solitary patron is digging into his hot meal. Four employees hover around ready to take orders, but there are few takers for the modestly-priced South Indian or Chinese cuisine.
Started by his father in 1975, the restaurant is now managed by Shashikant Shetty who is only 35. The restaurant ambience is modest, and there is a lot that could be done to fix it. Even in the A/C section, the paint is peeling and the sofa covers need to be changed.
Shetty explains that he stopped doing the regular monthly maintenance on the restaurant about a year and a half ago for a reason. “I saw that I needed to tighten my belt, so I have put these things off and just concentrated on giving proper service.”
The restaurant-owner saw the bubble growing in the economy and knew he needed to take measures to deal with the situation when it popped. He attributes his foresight to the kids that frequented his bar in the evenings with big rolls of money and huge limits on their credit cards. “They would say they were going out to an expensive nightclub, three nights in a row, spending 4,000 rupees each night. They were only 18, 21, and they would have their own bike. They were just going totally crazy with uncontrolled spending. And they had no savings.”
Shetty knew the importance of saving. Growing up in a middle class family, he says he was taught to save from an early age. His family was always conservative with money, he explains.
“Watching my parents and seeing how they acted, I learned to save. I kept telling my mom, we can indulge ourselves a little. But her credo was, if not necessary, then why do it?”
It hasn’t been easy for Shetty to run the business, even before the downturn, and perhaps that is why he learned to be frugal early on. Shetty says there are a lot of hardships in the restaurant industry. First, the growing popularity of street food—and not just snacks, but full meals—has been a huge source of competition. Restaurants cannot compete with food that is so cheaply made.
“Restaurants also have the lowest margins, but the highest cost prices,” says Shetty. “I am always asking myself why all of us [restaurant owners] are selling food so dirt cheap. But the roadside vendors force us to.”
Second, the last year, and especially the past few months, has seen his costs rise exponentially. The electricity bill has jumped from Rs. 40,000 to Rs. 80,000 a month since last May. Shetty says he was expecting the climb because the bill had been rising since last year.
“I tried to prepare by doing a lot of changes in electrical systems, rewiring them and changing tubes to curb costs. And it did help for a couple of months. But when the cost has gone from three to13 rupees per unit at night, what do you do?”
Other costs have also been spiralling. Gas has gone up 300 percent in the last six months, says Shetty. Raw materials have gone up 45-60 percent. Grains have gone up 100 percent and livestock 30-40 percent.
“I can understand that the fuel crisis meant oil and petrol went up. That means transport costs went up, and so did our veggies and raw materials. But the vat excise duty keeps changing every three months. There is no relief from the government in this industry.”
The 20% increase in the VAT excise duty in the past months has meant drinks are too expensive to order in a bar, and instead people are buying their drinks at wine shops, explains Shetty. (A beer at a wine shop is Rs. 70, while at Shashikant it is Rs. 100). He has tried to accept this reality and offset it by pushing his home delivery business.
Even so, sales are dropping. In the past few months, Shetty says Shashikant has seen a 20-22 percent drop in sales. Shetty has been forced to respond by raising the prices on the menu. Drinks went up first because 60% of Shashikant’s business is the bar, and there was a 30% increase in the food menu as well.
Shetty has also made a loan application in the last few months for Hotel Shashikant.
“I wanted to take a bit of an overdraft to run the business in a better manner. I was going to renovate. I also thought then I could buy in bulk and save money that way.”
But Shetty has been unable to get a loan, even from his bank with which he has had a relationship for three years.
“Restaurants and hotels are high risk so the bank doesn’t lend to us,” Shetty explains. “For the last six months, I have no liabilities except a car loan and have been trying to get a loan from all the reputed banks. But they tell me my profile doesn’t fit. They don’t mind taking my money, but they won’t give.”
So Shetty has continued to do what he knows how to do best: save. He says when shopping for groceries, he used to get specialty items but now he won’t. He has also reduced eating out and other outings. The last vacation he took was in January, and there won’t be another one soon.
“I am saving because I expect sales to fall further—this is only the beginning. December, the biggest month, will be especially lousy for everyone. I’m not badly affected by the recession yet. I have notches in my belt to tighten. Even now, I could afford to take an expensive holiday or travel first class. But I won’t.”
Perhaps it is in the Shetty’s blood to save. Or perhaps survival instinct is guiding him.
“If this restaurant shuts down, I have nothing. It is my life and soul,” he says.
The grasshopper who still flies high
Franz Almeida’s got style. There’s no denying that. As he swaggers down in his Giorgio Armani three-piece suit, you can’t help but notice the panache of a New York model. His cordovan skin is an exotic shade that suggests an amalgam of ancestors from Lisbon to Mumbai.
This half-Portuguese, half-Indian Mumbaikar gave up having his face in print for something far more exciting: flight school. A former street fighter, Almedia hasn’t lost the instincts that taught him to survive fist fights.
“Sometimes you gain, sometimes you lose,” he says with a shrug of his shoulders. A captain with Jet Airways, Almeida traverses the world treating himself to the best that countries across the planet have to offer. And here comes the cherry: his company subsidized his excesses.
Jet Airways, Almeida’s boss since 2001, liked to put their long-haul pilots in 5 star hotels and give them $100 a day to spend on frothy beer in Brussels and Peking Duck in Hong Kong. Jet lag was alleviated by downy pillows and yielding mattresses. His lifestyle as ‘Captain’ meant flying to New York for a juicy steak and falling asleep after a nightcap of room service champagne.
But Almeida’s luxurious routine burst open like all the other bubbles in the past months.
He wasn’t on the firing line of 1900 yellow-jacketed, tear-streaked Jet employees in October. But his daily bonus has been halved, and he now sleeps on stiffer mattresses in 3-star hotels. No more chocolates on pillows. No more nearly unlimited dim sum.
A salary cut on the horizon rubs salt in the wound from “father”, as some Jet-ers call founder chairman Naresh Goyal. Not to mention the oceans Almeida lost in the US stock market when it plunged.
You would think that the slowdown in the airline industry would have impacted his lifestyle. Fat chance.
The man is still spending like Dick Fuld, without the fall. He continues to nosh at chic brunches in South Mumbai. He still sips a martini, or a few, at the members-only Prive night club. And he shows this reporter the rare Portuguese tiles he plans to install in his bathroom.
The lion’s share of his salary goes (and will continue to go) to feed the appetite of his lifestyle. “I spend my money on the way I live, where I go, what I eat, and what I wear. Oh, and the vacations I take.” His next vacation may be to Rio De Janeiro for the Carnival festival, where the women are sirens, he tells this reporter with a grin.
Almeida knew he wanted to live the beautiful life ever since he was a kid. Growing up in Mumbai in a well-heeled family, Almeida dug the socialites and Bollywood-types around him, observing where they went, what they ate, what they liked. In the city of dreams, he too had one: to own a chain of plush, luxury hotels or a restaurant like Indigo, the swanky restaurant and bar behind the Taj Mahal Hotel in South Mumbai.
He hasn’t done that, but his lifestyle approximates it. Almeida hangs out in only the trendiest joints. His apartment on Carter Road in Bandra is a stone’s throw from the sea. He’s got a Rolex that rivals James Bond’s.
Like Bond, Almeida also needed adventure with style. He started flying because he loved the thrill of it. Conveniently, flying was also good for extravagance.
Almeida, on the last Sunday I meet him, is finally casual. A T-shirt reads: ‘Will fly for food.’ His startlingly Obama-like looks are attracting a gaggle of girls sipping lattes outside Café Coffee Day. But Almeida doesn’t stop for coffee. He already runs on two things: extravagance and flight.
Flying, Almeida says, is his life. Without meaning conceit, he tells me that he wanted to be a pilot because, “I wanted to live on a fine line between naïve solitude and instant death.”
Ever the prodigal son, his spending will keep treading that fine line too. Like the grasshopper, he will lavish his funds until winter comes and they run out.
Maybe winter hasn’t come yet for the tough ex-street fighter with arresting model-good looks. Maybe the captain won’t ever meet his fall. Because if he does, the Armani suit will have to be retired, and as for his T-shirt—Almeida really might be flying for food.
Elizabeth Flock is an associate reporter with the new business magazine to be launched by Network18 in association with Forbes, USA.
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/features/the-ant-and-the-grasshoppera-modern-winter-s-tale/373366
Source : Network18 business magazine
Elizabeth Flock, Forbes-Network18
How the ant learnt to save
When I enter Hotel Shashikant in Andheri East, it is lunchtime. A solitary patron is digging into his hot meal. Four employees hover around ready to take orders, but there are few takers for the modestly-priced South Indian or Chinese cuisine.
Started by his father in 1975, the restaurant is now managed by Shashikant Shetty who is only 35. The restaurant ambience is modest, and there is a lot that could be done to fix it. Even in the A/C section, the paint is peeling and the sofa covers need to be changed.
Shetty explains that he stopped doing the regular monthly maintenance on the restaurant about a year and a half ago for a reason. “I saw that I needed to tighten my belt, so I have put these things off and just concentrated on giving proper service.”
The restaurant-owner saw the bubble growing in the economy and knew he needed to take measures to deal with the situation when it popped. He attributes his foresight to the kids that frequented his bar in the evenings with big rolls of money and huge limits on their credit cards. “They would say they were going out to an expensive nightclub, three nights in a row, spending 4,000 rupees each night. They were only 18, 21, and they would have their own bike. They were just going totally crazy with uncontrolled spending. And they had no savings.”
Shetty knew the importance of saving. Growing up in a middle class family, he says he was taught to save from an early age. His family was always conservative with money, he explains.
“Watching my parents and seeing how they acted, I learned to save. I kept telling my mom, we can indulge ourselves a little. But her credo was, if not necessary, then why do it?”
It hasn’t been easy for Shetty to run the business, even before the downturn, and perhaps that is why he learned to be frugal early on. Shetty says there are a lot of hardships in the restaurant industry. First, the growing popularity of street food—and not just snacks, but full meals—has been a huge source of competition. Restaurants cannot compete with food that is so cheaply made.
“Restaurants also have the lowest margins, but the highest cost prices,” says Shetty. “I am always asking myself why all of us [restaurant owners] are selling food so dirt cheap. But the roadside vendors force us to.”
Second, the last year, and especially the past few months, has seen his costs rise exponentially. The electricity bill has jumped from Rs. 40,000 to Rs. 80,000 a month since last May. Shetty says he was expecting the climb because the bill had been rising since last year.
“I tried to prepare by doing a lot of changes in electrical systems, rewiring them and changing tubes to curb costs. And it did help for a couple of months. But when the cost has gone from three to13 rupees per unit at night, what do you do?”
Other costs have also been spiralling. Gas has gone up 300 percent in the last six months, says Shetty. Raw materials have gone up 45-60 percent. Grains have gone up 100 percent and livestock 30-40 percent.
“I can understand that the fuel crisis meant oil and petrol went up. That means transport costs went up, and so did our veggies and raw materials. But the vat excise duty keeps changing every three months. There is no relief from the government in this industry.”
The 20% increase in the VAT excise duty in the past months has meant drinks are too expensive to order in a bar, and instead people are buying their drinks at wine shops, explains Shetty. (A beer at a wine shop is Rs. 70, while at Shashikant it is Rs. 100). He has tried to accept this reality and offset it by pushing his home delivery business.
Even so, sales are dropping. In the past few months, Shetty says Shashikant has seen a 20-22 percent drop in sales. Shetty has been forced to respond by raising the prices on the menu. Drinks went up first because 60% of Shashikant’s business is the bar, and there was a 30% increase in the food menu as well.
Shetty has also made a loan application in the last few months for Hotel Shashikant.
“I wanted to take a bit of an overdraft to run the business in a better manner. I was going to renovate. I also thought then I could buy in bulk and save money that way.”
But Shetty has been unable to get a loan, even from his bank with which he has had a relationship for three years.
“Restaurants and hotels are high risk so the bank doesn’t lend to us,” Shetty explains. “For the last six months, I have no liabilities except a car loan and have been trying to get a loan from all the reputed banks. But they tell me my profile doesn’t fit. They don’t mind taking my money, but they won’t give.”
So Shetty has continued to do what he knows how to do best: save. He says when shopping for groceries, he used to get specialty items but now he won’t. He has also reduced eating out and other outings. The last vacation he took was in January, and there won’t be another one soon.
“I am saving because I expect sales to fall further—this is only the beginning. December, the biggest month, will be especially lousy for everyone. I’m not badly affected by the recession yet. I have notches in my belt to tighten. Even now, I could afford to take an expensive holiday or travel first class. But I won’t.”
Perhaps it is in the Shetty’s blood to save. Or perhaps survival instinct is guiding him.
“If this restaurant shuts down, I have nothing. It is my life and soul,” he says.
The grasshopper who still flies high
Franz Almeida’s got style. There’s no denying that. As he swaggers down in his Giorgio Armani three-piece suit, you can’t help but notice the panache of a New York model. His cordovan skin is an exotic shade that suggests an amalgam of ancestors from Lisbon to Mumbai.
This half-Portuguese, half-Indian Mumbaikar gave up having his face in print for something far more exciting: flight school. A former street fighter, Almedia hasn’t lost the instincts that taught him to survive fist fights.
“Sometimes you gain, sometimes you lose,” he says with a shrug of his shoulders. A captain with Jet Airways, Almeida traverses the world treating himself to the best that countries across the planet have to offer. And here comes the cherry: his company subsidized his excesses.
Jet Airways, Almeida’s boss since 2001, liked to put their long-haul pilots in 5 star hotels and give them $100 a day to spend on frothy beer in Brussels and Peking Duck in Hong Kong. Jet lag was alleviated by downy pillows and yielding mattresses. His lifestyle as ‘Captain’ meant flying to New York for a juicy steak and falling asleep after a nightcap of room service champagne.
But Almeida’s luxurious routine burst open like all the other bubbles in the past months.
He wasn’t on the firing line of 1900 yellow-jacketed, tear-streaked Jet employees in October. But his daily bonus has been halved, and he now sleeps on stiffer mattresses in 3-star hotels. No more chocolates on pillows. No more nearly unlimited dim sum.
A salary cut on the horizon rubs salt in the wound from “father”, as some Jet-ers call founder chairman Naresh Goyal. Not to mention the oceans Almeida lost in the US stock market when it plunged.
You would think that the slowdown in the airline industry would have impacted his lifestyle. Fat chance.
The man is still spending like Dick Fuld, without the fall. He continues to nosh at chic brunches in South Mumbai. He still sips a martini, or a few, at the members-only Prive night club. And he shows this reporter the rare Portuguese tiles he plans to install in his bathroom.
The lion’s share of his salary goes (and will continue to go) to feed the appetite of his lifestyle. “I spend my money on the way I live, where I go, what I eat, and what I wear. Oh, and the vacations I take.” His next vacation may be to Rio De Janeiro for the Carnival festival, where the women are sirens, he tells this reporter with a grin.
Almeida knew he wanted to live the beautiful life ever since he was a kid. Growing up in Mumbai in a well-heeled family, Almeida dug the socialites and Bollywood-types around him, observing where they went, what they ate, what they liked. In the city of dreams, he too had one: to own a chain of plush, luxury hotels or a restaurant like Indigo, the swanky restaurant and bar behind the Taj Mahal Hotel in South Mumbai.
He hasn’t done that, but his lifestyle approximates it. Almeida hangs out in only the trendiest joints. His apartment on Carter Road in Bandra is a stone’s throw from the sea. He’s got a Rolex that rivals James Bond’s.
Like Bond, Almeida also needed adventure with style. He started flying because he loved the thrill of it. Conveniently, flying was also good for extravagance.
Almeida, on the last Sunday I meet him, is finally casual. A T-shirt reads: ‘Will fly for food.’ His startlingly Obama-like looks are attracting a gaggle of girls sipping lattes outside Café Coffee Day. But Almeida doesn’t stop for coffee. He already runs on two things: extravagance and flight.
Flying, Almeida says, is his life. Without meaning conceit, he tells me that he wanted to be a pilot because, “I wanted to live on a fine line between naïve solitude and instant death.”
Ever the prodigal son, his spending will keep treading that fine line too. Like the grasshopper, he will lavish his funds until winter comes and they run out.
Maybe winter hasn’t come yet for the tough ex-street fighter with arresting model-good looks. Maybe the captain won’t ever meet his fall. Because if he does, the Armani suit will have to be retired, and as for his T-shirt—Almeida really might be flying for food.
Elizabeth Flock is an associate reporter with the new business magazine to be launched by Network18 in association with Forbes, USA.
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/features/the-ant-and-the-grasshoppera-modern-winter-s-tale/373366
Friday, December 19, 2008
With IC-814 in memory, India didn't talk to terrorists
Published on Mon, Dec 01, 2008 at 16:13 , Updated at Thu, Dec 04, 2008 at 13:04
Source : Network18 biz magazine special
Elizabeth Flock/Forbes-Network18
MUMBAI: If terror groups had hoped to force India into negotiations with last week's terror attacks in Mumbai, they were disappointed. Departing from past practice, the government stoutly refused to hold talks with terrorists and went on the counter offensive from the first minute.
Even as hundreds were being held hostage at the Taj Mahal Hotel, Oberoi-Trident and Chabad House, Maharashtra police chief Anami Narayan Roy made it clear in a telephone interview with Network18 that there would be no negotiations.
According to newspaper reports, Deccan Mujahideen, the group that claimed responsibility for the strikes, wanted to negotiate. “Ask the government to talk to us and we will release the hostages,” a man who identified himself as Imran Babar and a member of the terrorist group, said in a call to a television station.
These reports could not be confirmed independently and the police chief said the terrorists had not attempted to start talks, but the policy was clear from the start. “Our policy is to not negotiate.”
This is a marked change from years past, in which India has readily entered into negotiations in hostage situations. Most painfully memorable is the 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814. The government was forced on its knees during the negotiations. It had to release three militants in exchange for the release of 155 hostages.
One of the released men went on to create Jaish-e-Mohammad, a major Islamic terrorist organisation in South Asia, and a second was later convicted of murdering US journalist Daniel Pearl. That is the price India and the world paid for negotiating with terrorists. The current policy of the Indian government may have been shaped by that bitter lesson.
Peter R Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at King’s College in London, says, “This (hijacking) is the thing that politicians are thinking about right now. They look backwards, and they also know there is a precedent to set going forward.”
Terrorism experts agree that when a government chooses to negotiate with terrorists, they risk setting a dangerous precedent of yielding to their demands.
“If a government releases the prisoners when demanded, there is a vicious snowball effect globally,” says Aaron Richman, co-director of the Institute of Terrorism Research in Response in Jerusalem. “In future incidents, the terrorists know they can succeed by negotiation.”
The 1999 negotiation response may have also inspired subsequent terrorism attacks, says Neumann. “Governments who have not negotiated have had fewer terrorist situations, because then people know they will not negotiate.”
But Neumann also says that every government or police force wants to initiate some kind of communication with terrorists. “As long as they are kept talking, less people are killed and the government and police force can buy time to prepare their rescue operation.”
Even as rescue operations were underway at all the three locations, the Indian government never openly communicated with the terrorists. Instead, it was uncompromising in its pledge of non-negotiation, similar to policy exercised by Israel, Russia and the US.
Yet even Israel, which is known for its hard-line stance on non-communication with terrorists, has resorted to negotiation in the last few years. Richman cites the recent release of hundreds of prisoners to save one captive Israeli soldier. Israel also negotiated the return of the corpses of Israeli soldiers by releasing 100 incarcerated men this year.
Russia has opted for negotiation with the Chechen rebels in the Moscow theater hostage crisis in 2002 and the Beslan school hostage crisis in 2004. “Of course when they are attacking you, you must respond,” said former president of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev in 2004. “The problem of Chechnya will only be solved by negotiating, negotiating with all involved."
Dr Adam Dolnik, director of the Centre of Transnational Crime Prevention at the University of Wollongong, Australia, says in a situation such as the Mumbai hostage crisis, most Western countries would have negotiated. “It would have bought time for building a blueprint about how to go about this,” he said. “That is what Western countries would have done. But instead, the Indian government kept announcing that it was just about over when it wasn’t.”
The George Bush administration has said that it does not negotiate with terrorists, perhaps even more loudly than Israel or Russia. But it has made concessions when the lives of hostages seemed in certain peril. In 2006, the US released six of eight Iraqi women held by Coalition forces in exchange for Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll, who was being held in Baghdad.
The US denied that this was a case of negotiation, attempting to stamp out perception of the US as being weak. Perhaps the administration was also trying to erase the memory of 1979-1981 Iran hostage crisis, during which president Jimmy Carter’s negotiation was unsuccessful in freeing 52 US diplomats held hostage by a group of Islamist students for 444 days.
Similarly, India has sought to extinguish the flames of previous policies over the past few days. Yet the consequence has been grave: The loss of nearly 200 lives and more than 300 injured. Neumann says, “It is the ultimate dilemma: Weighing whether to save the hostages now or take a hard line and save lives in the future.”
The Indian government, however, seems not to have weighed the idea of negotiation at all. Israel National News reported that terrorists’ offers for negotiations for hostages in the Chabad House were met with the Indian government’s resounding: “No deal.”
Continuity of policy like this is crucial, says Richman. “If the government starts out not negotiating, they have to continue that. They must maintain that policy, unless they themselves determine to change it. The acts of the terrorists must not change it.”
As the whole world watched, India never wavered. “In a hostage situation, the actions of one government can have implications for the world,” said a top NATO official on the dilemma of negotiation. With hostages held not only from their own country (as has been the case in negotiations in Israel, the US, and Russia), but also from the West, this could never be more true.
The government has made it clear this time. Roy’s admonition that India would not negotiate seems to have been bona fide.
Yet while no reports have been made of negotiation, Richman points out that one cannot be sure what is happening behind closed doors. “What we see is what the media reveals to us,” he says. “Behind the scenes, we do not know.”
Elizabeth Flock is a reporter associate at the new business magazine to be launched by Network18 in alliance with Forbes, USA
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/current-affairs/with-ic-814memory-india-didnt-talk-to-terrorists/368715
Source : Network18 biz magazine special
Elizabeth Flock/Forbes-Network18
MUMBAI: If terror groups had hoped to force India into negotiations with last week's terror attacks in Mumbai, they were disappointed. Departing from past practice, the government stoutly refused to hold talks with terrorists and went on the counter offensive from the first minute.
Even as hundreds were being held hostage at the Taj Mahal Hotel, Oberoi-Trident and Chabad House, Maharashtra police chief Anami Narayan Roy made it clear in a telephone interview with Network18 that there would be no negotiations.
According to newspaper reports, Deccan Mujahideen, the group that claimed responsibility for the strikes, wanted to negotiate. “Ask the government to talk to us and we will release the hostages,” a man who identified himself as Imran Babar and a member of the terrorist group, said in a call to a television station.
These reports could not be confirmed independently and the police chief said the terrorists had not attempted to start talks, but the policy was clear from the start. “Our policy is to not negotiate.”
This is a marked change from years past, in which India has readily entered into negotiations in hostage situations. Most painfully memorable is the 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814. The government was forced on its knees during the negotiations. It had to release three militants in exchange for the release of 155 hostages.
One of the released men went on to create Jaish-e-Mohammad, a major Islamic terrorist organisation in South Asia, and a second was later convicted of murdering US journalist Daniel Pearl. That is the price India and the world paid for negotiating with terrorists. The current policy of the Indian government may have been shaped by that bitter lesson.
Peter R Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at King’s College in London, says, “This (hijacking) is the thing that politicians are thinking about right now. They look backwards, and they also know there is a precedent to set going forward.”
Terrorism experts agree that when a government chooses to negotiate with terrorists, they risk setting a dangerous precedent of yielding to their demands.
“If a government releases the prisoners when demanded, there is a vicious snowball effect globally,” says Aaron Richman, co-director of the Institute of Terrorism Research in Response in Jerusalem. “In future incidents, the terrorists know they can succeed by negotiation.”
The 1999 negotiation response may have also inspired subsequent terrorism attacks, says Neumann. “Governments who have not negotiated have had fewer terrorist situations, because then people know they will not negotiate.”
But Neumann also says that every government or police force wants to initiate some kind of communication with terrorists. “As long as they are kept talking, less people are killed and the government and police force can buy time to prepare their rescue operation.”
Even as rescue operations were underway at all the three locations, the Indian government never openly communicated with the terrorists. Instead, it was uncompromising in its pledge of non-negotiation, similar to policy exercised by Israel, Russia and the US.
Yet even Israel, which is known for its hard-line stance on non-communication with terrorists, has resorted to negotiation in the last few years. Richman cites the recent release of hundreds of prisoners to save one captive Israeli soldier. Israel also negotiated the return of the corpses of Israeli soldiers by releasing 100 incarcerated men this year.
Russia has opted for negotiation with the Chechen rebels in the Moscow theater hostage crisis in 2002 and the Beslan school hostage crisis in 2004. “Of course when they are attacking you, you must respond,” said former president of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev in 2004. “The problem of Chechnya will only be solved by negotiating, negotiating with all involved."
Dr Adam Dolnik, director of the Centre of Transnational Crime Prevention at the University of Wollongong, Australia, says in a situation such as the Mumbai hostage crisis, most Western countries would have negotiated. “It would have bought time for building a blueprint about how to go about this,” he said. “That is what Western countries would have done. But instead, the Indian government kept announcing that it was just about over when it wasn’t.”
The George Bush administration has said that it does not negotiate with terrorists, perhaps even more loudly than Israel or Russia. But it has made concessions when the lives of hostages seemed in certain peril. In 2006, the US released six of eight Iraqi women held by Coalition forces in exchange for Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll, who was being held in Baghdad.
The US denied that this was a case of negotiation, attempting to stamp out perception of the US as being weak. Perhaps the administration was also trying to erase the memory of 1979-1981 Iran hostage crisis, during which president Jimmy Carter’s negotiation was unsuccessful in freeing 52 US diplomats held hostage by a group of Islamist students for 444 days.
Similarly, India has sought to extinguish the flames of previous policies over the past few days. Yet the consequence has been grave: The loss of nearly 200 lives and more than 300 injured. Neumann says, “It is the ultimate dilemma: Weighing whether to save the hostages now or take a hard line and save lives in the future.”
The Indian government, however, seems not to have weighed the idea of negotiation at all. Israel National News reported that terrorists’ offers for negotiations for hostages in the Chabad House were met with the Indian government’s resounding: “No deal.”
Continuity of policy like this is crucial, says Richman. “If the government starts out not negotiating, they have to continue that. They must maintain that policy, unless they themselves determine to change it. The acts of the terrorists must not change it.”
As the whole world watched, India never wavered. “In a hostage situation, the actions of one government can have implications for the world,” said a top NATO official on the dilemma of negotiation. With hostages held not only from their own country (as has been the case in negotiations in Israel, the US, and Russia), but also from the West, this could never be more true.
The government has made it clear this time. Roy’s admonition that India would not negotiate seems to have been bona fide.
Yet while no reports have been made of negotiation, Richman points out that one cannot be sure what is happening behind closed doors. “What we see is what the media reveals to us,” he says. “Behind the scenes, we do not know.”
Elizabeth Flock is a reporter associate at the new business magazine to be launched by Network18 in alliance with Forbes, USA
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/current-affairs/with-ic-814memory-india-didnt-talk-to-terrorists/368715
New York police in Mumbai for anti-terror tips
Published on Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 17:52 , Updated at Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 18:02
Source : Forbes-Network18
Elizabeth Flock/Forbes-Network18
In July 2006, after the train blasts, the New York Police Department (NYPD) had sent one intelligence officer to Mumbai to get an in-depth account of the attack and brief security chiefs back home.
This time, November 2008, NYPD has sent three officers from its counter-terrorism squad to Mumbai to study the attacks in detail. Their objective is to pick up lessons from the way the attack was carried out here in order to put better preventive measures in place back home, and to consider if New York is prepared to respond to this kind of attack.
NYPD Commissioner Paul Browne says the three officers in Mumbai have already collected much valuable information. By studying the attack sites, the officers have gained a better understanding of how well-trained and disciplined the terrorists were.
“The officers went to each of the sites and photographed the battle damage, and looked at the impact made by grenades and bullets,” says Browne. “One of our captains noticed that the ballistics all went head level or down. If someone is inexperienced, the spray of bullets would be much higher than head level. But the bullets were all below. This shows how trained these people were.”
Browne says the officers are also studying Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus to understand how the terrorists entered and attacked the railway station and what the evacuation procedures in place were.
“They are looking at what happened and the thought processes, techniques, and style of warfare of the terrorists,” says Dov Ben Zwerling, Director of Tactical Operations and Training for the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response in Israel, who is here in Mumbai to similarly study the attacks. “Then they think about how to fight that.”
The focus of these visits is always to improve intelligence back home. The scope of the attack on Mumbai is something the NYPD has been worried about for some time now. “We have considered this kind of attack,” says Browne. “So we have created scenarios with multiple simultaneous attacks by the same terrorist, and thought about how this would stretch resources thin, especially if it continued for a period of time and our people got tired. Mumbai was a situation where it actually happened, so we have to look at it.”
Post-9/11, NYPD has used counter-terrorism measures such as these visits to thwart terrorist attacks. David Cohen, a former CIA officer who transferred to NYPD to head their intelligence division after 9/11, said the department has spotted more than a dozen planned terrorist attacks on the city as a result of these new counter-terrorist measures. Several of these foiled attacks were planned for train stations, demonstrating the value for the NYPD in studying the 2006 and now, the more recent, Mumbai attacks.
The NYPD officers are also interested in learning if there is anything new or distinctive about this attack. Browne says the chief departure in the Mumbai attack from previous similar ones elsewhere was the use of electronic devices by the terrorists.
“The explosion of technology worked as a tool for their attack, allowing them to have real time info on the police and military response and modify their attack. It is not the first time hostage takers have used technology and media in an attack, but it is the first time you saw it to this extent. It is the first time that [the terrorists] were continually directed by the technology, and communicating with people that could help them to ensure success.”
According to the Associated Press, the counterterrorism effort by the NYPD is unequaled by any city in the United States, and even perhaps the world. And while, the NYPD is taking its lessons from Mumbai, perhaps Mumbai should also take a few lessons from them. NYPD, the largest police department in the United States with 37,000 officers, has been sending detectives and officers to terror-hit locations since 9/11, when the counter-terrorism task force was created. Officers have visited Moscow, London, Madrid, and Mumbai.
The measure is a part of a massive overhaul that took place in the NYPD post-9/11, in its homeland security, counter-terrorism and surveillance duties. Since 2001, NYPD has assigned 1000 officers to counter-terrorism duty, including 10 detectives posted around the globe to gather and share intelligence. It has also spent tens of millions of dollars on new technology for security measures.
Elizabeth Flock is a Reporter Associate with the new business magazine to be launched by Network 18 in alliance with Forbes of USA
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/news/new-york-policemumbai-for-anti-terror-tips/20/00/370429
Source : Forbes-Network18
Elizabeth Flock/Forbes-Network18
In July 2006, after the train blasts, the New York Police Department (NYPD) had sent one intelligence officer to Mumbai to get an in-depth account of the attack and brief security chiefs back home.
This time, November 2008, NYPD has sent three officers from its counter-terrorism squad to Mumbai to study the attacks in detail. Their objective is to pick up lessons from the way the attack was carried out here in order to put better preventive measures in place back home, and to consider if New York is prepared to respond to this kind of attack.
NYPD Commissioner Paul Browne says the three officers in Mumbai have already collected much valuable information. By studying the attack sites, the officers have gained a better understanding of how well-trained and disciplined the terrorists were.
“The officers went to each of the sites and photographed the battle damage, and looked at the impact made by grenades and bullets,” says Browne. “One of our captains noticed that the ballistics all went head level or down. If someone is inexperienced, the spray of bullets would be much higher than head level. But the bullets were all below. This shows how trained these people were.”
Browne says the officers are also studying Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus to understand how the terrorists entered and attacked the railway station and what the evacuation procedures in place were.
“They are looking at what happened and the thought processes, techniques, and style of warfare of the terrorists,” says Dov Ben Zwerling, Director of Tactical Operations and Training for the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response in Israel, who is here in Mumbai to similarly study the attacks. “Then they think about how to fight that.”
The focus of these visits is always to improve intelligence back home. The scope of the attack on Mumbai is something the NYPD has been worried about for some time now. “We have considered this kind of attack,” says Browne. “So we have created scenarios with multiple simultaneous attacks by the same terrorist, and thought about how this would stretch resources thin, especially if it continued for a period of time and our people got tired. Mumbai was a situation where it actually happened, so we have to look at it.”
Post-9/11, NYPD has used counter-terrorism measures such as these visits to thwart terrorist attacks. David Cohen, a former CIA officer who transferred to NYPD to head their intelligence division after 9/11, said the department has spotted more than a dozen planned terrorist attacks on the city as a result of these new counter-terrorist measures. Several of these foiled attacks were planned for train stations, demonstrating the value for the NYPD in studying the 2006 and now, the more recent, Mumbai attacks.
The NYPD officers are also interested in learning if there is anything new or distinctive about this attack. Browne says the chief departure in the Mumbai attack from previous similar ones elsewhere was the use of electronic devices by the terrorists.
“The explosion of technology worked as a tool for their attack, allowing them to have real time info on the police and military response and modify their attack. It is not the first time hostage takers have used technology and media in an attack, but it is the first time you saw it to this extent. It is the first time that [the terrorists] were continually directed by the technology, and communicating with people that could help them to ensure success.”
According to the Associated Press, the counterterrorism effort by the NYPD is unequaled by any city in the United States, and even perhaps the world. And while, the NYPD is taking its lessons from Mumbai, perhaps Mumbai should also take a few lessons from them. NYPD, the largest police department in the United States with 37,000 officers, has been sending detectives and officers to terror-hit locations since 9/11, when the counter-terrorism task force was created. Officers have visited Moscow, London, Madrid, and Mumbai.
The measure is a part of a massive overhaul that took place in the NYPD post-9/11, in its homeland security, counter-terrorism and surveillance duties. Since 2001, NYPD has assigned 1000 officers to counter-terrorism duty, including 10 detectives posted around the globe to gather and share intelligence. It has also spent tens of millions of dollars on new technology for security measures.
Elizabeth Flock is a Reporter Associate with the new business magazine to be launched by Network 18 in alliance with Forbes of USA
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/news/new-york-policemumbai-for-anti-terror-tips/20/00/370429
Looking beyond borders for lessons in handling terrorism
Published on Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 14:35 , Updated at Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 14:47
Source : Looking beyond borders for lessons in handling terrorism,Network18 business magazine
Shloka Nath, NS Ramnath and Elizabeth Flock / Forbes-Network18
At a time when India is evaluating ways to beef up its response and prevention mechanism against terror attacks, lessons may be learnt from other cities like London, New York, Madrid, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Colombo.
While the first three have suffered some of the biggest terror attacks in recent times, the Israeli cities and Sri Lankan capital have been in the cross-hairs of terrorists for years. All have established systems to prevent further attacks.
High-profile landmarks are closely guarded in New York. At the Four Seasons hotel for example, no security measure seems too extreme after 9/11. Uniformed guards keep a close watch on not just the lobby, but also the service and back entrances. Every employee’s ID is closely checked. And visitors at the hotel—one of the best known five-star accommodations in the city—cannot use the lift without a room key.
In Israel, a hotel, café or movie theatre gets a permit to operate only if it has armed guards. “There is no entrance where you are not checked,” says Professor Raphael Israeli, a Senior Fellow at the Harry Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace in Jerusalem.
While Spain has focused on surveillance by thorough documentation, the UK relies on surveillance cameras. Barry Hughill, of the UK-based human rights organisation Liberty, has described Britain as “the CCTV capital of the world.” But Londoners don’t seem to mind. In the UK’s war against terror, CCTVs are used extensively to pre-empt undesirable behaviour because it allows people to go about their daily routine unfettered, even if they can’t remain unseen.
The security measures go beyond guarding important landmarks.
Effective intelligence gathering, alert citizens, coordination between departments and police empowerment are strategies that have worked for all these cities.
Jonathan B. Tucker, a former senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., says vigilance by the public plays a key role in preventing terror attacks. “The average Israeli is aware of suspicious packages, individuals, and actions that could pose a threat to public safety and does not hesitate to notify the police. As a result, ordinary citizens foil more than 80% of attempted terrorist attacks in Israel,” he says.
Colonel R Hariharan, an intelligence specialist on South Asia and a retired military intelligence officer who has served in Sri Lanka, says identifying the indicators of terror attacks have been so drilled into citizens of Sri Lanka that recently, when they found an unattended bag in a bus, they stopped the vehicle and got down—without panic. The bomb went off, injuring only two persons.
To take terrorism head-on, coordination between various forces also becomes a priority.
Israel uses a national model for policing, combining regular police forces as well as quasi-military forces like the Border Guard under one roof in its headquarters in Jerusalem.
Post-9/11, efforts have been made in the US for a more coordinated approach to fight terror. Alex Alexiev, vice president of research at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., explains, “One of the positive steps we have taken in the US has been to set up terrorism intelligence centres where various agencies of government and local police work side by side. For example, in Los Angeles, you have the FBI, CIA, LA police and various other agencies like the fire department and the airport police all working together. These professionals sit in the same office, the same department and they become colleagues as opposed to different competing departments. In India, they need to cooperate closely and make sure that no lead goes cold.”
While Spain could say its cities have not seen another attack since the Madrid train bombings in March of 2004 because of their focus on documentation, this too has been a success because of better coordination between departments.
Fernando Reinares, Senior Analyst on International Terrorism, in his report “After the Madrid Bombings: Internal Security Reforms and the Prevention of Global Terrorism in Spain,” writes, “As a result of a programme… which started just a few weeks after the Madrid bombings, shared access for the National Police and for the Civil Guard became a reality…for databases including the national identity document (DNI), arms and explosives, passenger lists, and voice and fingerprint identification systems.”
Empowering police is another key point. Ajai Sahni, Executive Director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi, and editor of the South Asia Intelligence Review says, “We need a truly empowered police force with good counter-terrorism training and equipment, which understands the trends in international terrorism. What occurred in Mumbai was a consequence of the infirmity of the police.”
After 9/11, every group that shared responsibility in handling the attacks, from the New York Police Department (NYPD) to federal agencies such as the FBI and CIA, saw a massive overhaul. All of them beefed up overall numbers, spent millions of dollars on high-tech security measures, and assigned specific officers or specialists to focus on counter-terrorism efforts.
The concept of homeland security was also born at that time and city police forces received a major boost in counter terrorism training.
But in Mumbai and most other Indian cities, poor policing against terror attacks isn’t just a result of inadequate resources, it is also constrained by insufficient intelligence gathering. Alexiev from the Center for Security Policy explains, “The police in India are almost like a marginal factor in counter terrorism. It’s the police who know the locals and the neighbourhoods and there has to be some level of effective local intelligence.”
While lessons from other city targets are valuable, perhaps there are also lessons to be learnt from the West on what not to do. The shooting of an innocent Brazilian man on the London Underground a week after the 7/7 London bombings is a telling example. Crispin Black, an independent intelligence consultant and well-known media commentator on terrorism and intelligence in the UK, agrees that the ‘shoot on sight’ directive was a mistake. “That law is still there on the books, but I doubt it will ever be implemented again.”
Others, like Jason Burke, Chief Foreign Correspondent of The Observer, who has covered the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, says America’s response to the 9/11 attacks was profoundly flawed and counter productive in many ways—invading Afghanistan was not the answer.
“India needs to avoid subsequent errors. Lots of people in the subcontinent talk about how America needs to think before it acts—the same logic can be applied domestically. You need a logical, dispassionate approach,” he says.
Senior Features Writer Shloka Nath, Principal Correspondent NS Ramnath and Reporter Associate Elizabeth Flock are with the new business magazine to be launched by Network18 in alliance with Forbes, USA.
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/current-affairs/looking-beyond-borders-for-lessons-handling-terrorism/370162
Source : Looking beyond borders for lessons in handling terrorism,Network18 business magazine
Shloka Nath, NS Ramnath and Elizabeth Flock / Forbes-Network18
At a time when India is evaluating ways to beef up its response and prevention mechanism against terror attacks, lessons may be learnt from other cities like London, New York, Madrid, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Colombo.
While the first three have suffered some of the biggest terror attacks in recent times, the Israeli cities and Sri Lankan capital have been in the cross-hairs of terrorists for years. All have established systems to prevent further attacks.
High-profile landmarks are closely guarded in New York. At the Four Seasons hotel for example, no security measure seems too extreme after 9/11. Uniformed guards keep a close watch on not just the lobby, but also the service and back entrances. Every employee’s ID is closely checked. And visitors at the hotel—one of the best known five-star accommodations in the city—cannot use the lift without a room key.
In Israel, a hotel, café or movie theatre gets a permit to operate only if it has armed guards. “There is no entrance where you are not checked,” says Professor Raphael Israeli, a Senior Fellow at the Harry Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace in Jerusalem.
While Spain has focused on surveillance by thorough documentation, the UK relies on surveillance cameras. Barry Hughill, of the UK-based human rights organisation Liberty, has described Britain as “the CCTV capital of the world.” But Londoners don’t seem to mind. In the UK’s war against terror, CCTVs are used extensively to pre-empt undesirable behaviour because it allows people to go about their daily routine unfettered, even if they can’t remain unseen.
The security measures go beyond guarding important landmarks.
Effective intelligence gathering, alert citizens, coordination between departments and police empowerment are strategies that have worked for all these cities.
Jonathan B. Tucker, a former senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., says vigilance by the public plays a key role in preventing terror attacks. “The average Israeli is aware of suspicious packages, individuals, and actions that could pose a threat to public safety and does not hesitate to notify the police. As a result, ordinary citizens foil more than 80% of attempted terrorist attacks in Israel,” he says.
Colonel R Hariharan, an intelligence specialist on South Asia and a retired military intelligence officer who has served in Sri Lanka, says identifying the indicators of terror attacks have been so drilled into citizens of Sri Lanka that recently, when they found an unattended bag in a bus, they stopped the vehicle and got down—without panic. The bomb went off, injuring only two persons.
To take terrorism head-on, coordination between various forces also becomes a priority.
Israel uses a national model for policing, combining regular police forces as well as quasi-military forces like the Border Guard under one roof in its headquarters in Jerusalem.
Post-9/11, efforts have been made in the US for a more coordinated approach to fight terror. Alex Alexiev, vice president of research at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., explains, “One of the positive steps we have taken in the US has been to set up terrorism intelligence centres where various agencies of government and local police work side by side. For example, in Los Angeles, you have the FBI, CIA, LA police and various other agencies like the fire department and the airport police all working together. These professionals sit in the same office, the same department and they become colleagues as opposed to different competing departments. In India, they need to cooperate closely and make sure that no lead goes cold.”
While Spain could say its cities have not seen another attack since the Madrid train bombings in March of 2004 because of their focus on documentation, this too has been a success because of better coordination between departments.
Fernando Reinares, Senior Analyst on International Terrorism, in his report “After the Madrid Bombings: Internal Security Reforms and the Prevention of Global Terrorism in Spain,” writes, “As a result of a programme… which started just a few weeks after the Madrid bombings, shared access for the National Police and for the Civil Guard became a reality…for databases including the national identity document (DNI), arms and explosives, passenger lists, and voice and fingerprint identification systems.”
Empowering police is another key point. Ajai Sahni, Executive Director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi, and editor of the South Asia Intelligence Review says, “We need a truly empowered police force with good counter-terrorism training and equipment, which understands the trends in international terrorism. What occurred in Mumbai was a consequence of the infirmity of the police.”
After 9/11, every group that shared responsibility in handling the attacks, from the New York Police Department (NYPD) to federal agencies such as the FBI and CIA, saw a massive overhaul. All of them beefed up overall numbers, spent millions of dollars on high-tech security measures, and assigned specific officers or specialists to focus on counter-terrorism efforts.
The concept of homeland security was also born at that time and city police forces received a major boost in counter terrorism training.
But in Mumbai and most other Indian cities, poor policing against terror attacks isn’t just a result of inadequate resources, it is also constrained by insufficient intelligence gathering. Alexiev from the Center for Security Policy explains, “The police in India are almost like a marginal factor in counter terrorism. It’s the police who know the locals and the neighbourhoods and there has to be some level of effective local intelligence.”
While lessons from other city targets are valuable, perhaps there are also lessons to be learnt from the West on what not to do. The shooting of an innocent Brazilian man on the London Underground a week after the 7/7 London bombings is a telling example. Crispin Black, an independent intelligence consultant and well-known media commentator on terrorism and intelligence in the UK, agrees that the ‘shoot on sight’ directive was a mistake. “That law is still there on the books, but I doubt it will ever be implemented again.”
Others, like Jason Burke, Chief Foreign Correspondent of The Observer, who has covered the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, says America’s response to the 9/11 attacks was profoundly flawed and counter productive in many ways—invading Afghanistan was not the answer.
“India needs to avoid subsequent errors. Lots of people in the subcontinent talk about how America needs to think before it acts—the same logic can be applied domestically. You need a logical, dispassionate approach,” he says.
Senior Features Writer Shloka Nath, Principal Correspondent NS Ramnath and Reporter Associate Elizabeth Flock are with the new business magazine to be launched by Network18 in alliance with Forbes, USA.
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/current-affairs/looking-beyond-borders-for-lessons-handling-terrorism/370162
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
