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from India Insight:
Delhi rape case reignites police reform debate
(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily of Reuters)
I live in India’s rape capital where rape cases are as common as power cuts used to be a few years ago. Even reports of police misbehaviour have become routine.
While all rape cases do not get media attention, the recent rape of a five-year-old girl is in the limelight, especially because of the way the police handled the case.
Video footage showed an officer pushing and slapping a woman protester (watch here), and reports alleged that investigators offered the victim's family money to not file a case. The man who slapped the woman and two more officials have been suspended for lapses.
from India Insight:
Journalist Sardesai sours on Twitter: “Had hoped to interact; failed.”
(The following post contains some essential Hindi translation help from my colleagues Arnika Thakur, Suraj Balakrishnan and Havovi Cooper. Any remaining errors or lack of precision are my fault as I reviewed and participated in all translations. Additionally, any opinions here are those of the author, and not necessarily those of Thomson Reuters Corp.)
From the desk of Rajdeep Sardesai, editor in chief of Indian news network IBN Live (I stitched these sentences together from his Twitter account):
from Global Investing:
Will gold’s glitter dim in India?
Indians have reacted to the latest gold prices falls by --- buying more gold. And why not? Aside from Indians' well known passion for the yellow metal (yours truly not excluded) gold has by and large served well as an investment: annual returns over the past five years have been around 17 percent, Morgan Stanley notes.
Now, gold's near 20 percent plunge this year has wiped some $300 billion off Indians' gold holdings, Morgan Stanley estimates in a note (households are believed to own about 15,000 metric tonnes of gold). So is the gold rush in India over?
from India Insight:
Thirty-three percent of world’s poorest live in India
(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily of Reuters)
India has 33 percent of the world’s poorest 1.2 billion people, even though the country's poverty rate is half as high as it was three decades ago, according to a new World Bank report.
from Global Investing:
India’s deficit — not just about oil and gold
India's finance minister P Chidambaram can be forgiven for feeling cheerful. After all, prices for oil and gold, the two biggest constituents of his country's import bill, have tumbled sharply this week. If sustained, these developments might significantly ease India's current account deficit headache -- possibly to the tune of $20 billion a year.
Chidambaram said yesterday he expects the deficit to halve in a year or two from last year's 5 percent level. Markets are celebrating too -- the Indian rupee, stocks and bonds have all rallied this week.
from Global Investing:
Amid yen weakness, some Asian winners
Asian equity markets tend to be casualties of weak yen. That has generally been the case this time too, especially for South Korea.
Data from our cousins at Lipper offers some evidence to ponder, with net outflows from Korean equity funds at close to $700 million in the first three months of the year. That's the equivalent of about 4 percent of the total assets held by those funds. The picture was more stark for Taiwan funds, for whom a similar net outflow equated to almost 10 percent of total AuM. Look more broadly though and the picture blurs; Asia ex-Japan equity funds have seen net inflows of more than $3 billion in the first three months of the year, according to Lipper data.
from India Insight:
Should India ban Internet porn?
(This commentary reflects the thoughts of the author. It does not reflect the views of Thomson Reuters Corp.)
Neighbours China and Pakistan do it. Guyana in South America and Egypt do it. Even South Korea, where 81.1 percent of the population is online, does it. Should India make Internet pornography illegal too?
from Global Investing:
Cheaper oil and gold: a game changer for India?
Someone's loss is someone's gain and as Russian and South African markets reel from the recent oil and gold price rout, investors are getting ready to move more cash into commodity importer India.
Stubbornly high inflation and a big current account deficit are India's twin headaches. Lower oil and gold prices will help with both. India’s headline inflation index is likely to head lower, potentially opening room for more interest rate cuts. That in turn could reduce gold demand from Indians who have stepped up purchases of the yellow metal in recent years as a hedge against inflation.
from India Insight:
Suffering and apathy in Jaipur: drivers ignore hit-and-run victims
"Murderously selfish India: Woman, baby die in terrible accident in Jaipur as husband, son beg passersby for help."
Shiv Aroor's dispatch on Twitter says it all. Other people in India tonight are echoing the theme: people racing through their day in modern India, too busy or too wary to get involved when they see people in distress. In this case, a truck struck a family of four riding on a motorcycle in Jaipur on Monday, killing a woman and her eight-month-old daughter. The woman's husband and son escaped. The family was riding the motorcycle through the Ghat Ki Guni tunnel on Sunday afternoon when the truck struck them, according to the Hindustan Times and other Indian news organisations.
from The Human Impact:
“Urinating in dams” to solve India’s drought? Minister faces backlash
As India's western state of Maharashtra reels from the worst drought in over four decades and millions of people face the risk of hunger, a top official has sparked outrage with a crass, insensitive joke that he should urinate in the region's empty dams to solve water shortages.
Ajit Pawar, deputy chief minister of Maharashtra and former irrigation minister, referred in a speech last weekend to a poor drought-hit farmer who had been on hunger strike for almost two months to demand more water.
