India Insight

Why so much euphoria over the presidential polls? Shouldn’t the government concentrate on the economy; it’s a ceremonial post after all, we thought.

However, the way the election process panned out might be the boost the Congress party needed ahead of the 2014 general elections, not only politically, but even for the economy.

With Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee all set to be India’s 13th president, the party has every reason to cheer, at least for now. The Congress will have the benefit of having one of its most loyal ministers at the Rashtrapati Bhawan, and he can come in handy in 2014.

From the economy’s perspective, the Congress has sent a clear signal that it has had enough of Mamata Banerjee, its key ally. She has left no stone unturned when it comes to blocking New Delhi’s initiatives to push through reforms, something desperately needed to get the economy back on track.

The Economic Times headline sums it well – Dada to walk the lawns, Didi can take a walk. It was high time the Congress put its foot down and sent a clear message to her. The strategy seems to have worked.

Asking someone to represent India in North Korea is a little like belling the cat. Everybody knows they need to pick someone, but no Foreign Service officer wants to go to “godforsaken” Pyongyang.

Finding someone to take the job must have been hard, but was it so hard that they finally had to settle for a stenographer? India’s ministry of external affairs might be wondering the same thing. It is reviewing the appointment of Ajay K. Sharma after some officials raised questions about his qualifications to represent India in the isolated country.

Media reports say Sharma, a principal staff officer in the stenographer cadre, joined the ministry 31 years ago as a personal assistant, and had some limited experience in Suva as a counsellor handling pay and allowances.

How poor do you have to be in India to get the government to say you’re poor? The Indian government used to say that 28.6 rupees (51 cents) a day or less for urban Indians — about 858 rupees or $15.30 a month was about right. Activists for the poor said that it was unrealistic to think that people who were making more than that amount a day were well off.

As a government-appointed commission works on defining a new poverty line, it might want to consult India’s Parsis, descendants of Zoroastrians who migrated to India from Persia (present-day Iran) several centuries ago.

On Monday, the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP), an administrative body for the Parsi community in India, said it will define Parsis as poor if their monthly income is less than 90,000 rupees ($1,613). This translates to an annual income of 1.08 million rupees, way above India’s 2011 annual per capita income of about 85,000 rupees. You’re a poor Parsi if you’re ‘slightly’ richer than the average Indian, in other words.

Just before I clicked on the ‘delete’ button at the top of my spam folder in Gmail, I spotted the name. Asha Rajaratnam, it said, and the mail was titled ‘Namaste’ (a traditional Indian greeting).

“My name is Asha Rajaratnam, I am the wife of Raj Rajaratnam founder of the Galleon Group, New York. I do have a proposal for you, which would be of financial benefits to you and myself,” it said.

The mail came from arajaratnam@galleon.com and if it hadn’t been for the red warning strip from Gmail and the fact that I know the former Galleon Group hedge fund manager is serving an 11-year prison sentence for insider trading, it would have come across as a genuine mail.

This past weekend, hacking group and self proclaimed internet activists Anonymous held protests in 16 Indian cities, including New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore to raise their voices for online freedom. And by all accounts, it turned out to be a flop.

If one looks at social networks, a lot of interest was generated on this issue as people signed up and ranted on the likes of Facebook and Twitter about how the Indian government was being tyrannical and unfair about blocking some content sharing and “anti-establishment” sites following a March 29 court order.

But that interest did not translate into a good turnout. In New Delhi, there were more journalists than protesters. And those who were there — mostly college students — were pretty incoherent, vague and unsure about what their demands were and what they wanted. Friends in other cities also tweeted about how the protests there were badly organised and had comically low turnouts. One friend tweeted about how organisers in Bangalore were charging 200 rupees for Guy Fawkes masks, which have become synonymous with protests in urban centres across the world.

By Soham Chatterjee

They sent out about 10,000 invitations. About 850 responded. Maybe 25 showed up.

Make that 30 if you include the press.

These twentysomethings arrived to “occupy Bangalore,” to protest India’s efforts to shut down “torrent” sites that allow file sharing — and the distribution of pirated movies and music — and to tell the public about India’s attempts to punish people who post “obscene” content on their social media websites such as Facebook or Twitter.

Unlike the May 31 “bandh,” or “shutdown,” which forced much of the city to close as India’s Bharatiya Janata Party protested the rising cost of fuel, it seemed harder to get people to stand up for virtual rights. Internet freedom rallies don’t quite arouse people’s passions in any country, let alone one that already bans the importation of certain books. And remember: this is India’s self-styled technology capital.

‘Deferred’ — Excessive use of this word is something that India cannot afford at this stage. Amid economic turmoil, reforms are desperately needed to signal the government’s resolve to fix the current situation.

But in yet another postponement on Thursday, the cabinet deferred the pension reform bill which proposed to open the sector to foreign investors, after key ally Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of West Bengal and Trinamool party chief, opposed it.

With 19 members in the Lok Sabha, parliament’s lower house, Banerjee’s party has acted like a roadblock for the UPA coalition for months. Maybe the government needs to seriously start thinking about replacing her in the coalition, or limp along as a lame duck administration until the next election.

Planning to buy a car? Seeing petrol prices head northwards, chances are high you would have changed your mind and now intend to buy a diesel-powered vehicle. That might be a smart move given the government’s reluctance to tinker with diesel prices in the face of stiff opposition. But there are plans afoot to deter you.

After considering raising diesel prices at one point, the government is now mulling a proposal of higher duty on diesel vehicles and even thinking of increasing diesel prices only for cars and sports utility vehicles (SUVs) — something that has been debated earlier.

The aim of these alternate proposals is simple — to reduce the consumption of diesel in India which would ease the strain on the government’s finances, and stop wealthy SUV owners from reaping the benefits of state subsidies.

Every morning, Dharma picks up a bottle of water and heads to a field to defecate. His wife goes to a public toilet nearby. The 29-year-old cobbler has been living and working in India’s capital for over ten years now, but he still does not have a toilet in his house. Just like millions of Indians.

The employees of the Planning Commission, a government agency, are luckier. They can unburden their bowels in toilets that have been refurbished with a budget of 3 million rupees ($55,000). An additional 500,000 rupees ($9,000) has been spent in installing a security system that ensures only those with a “smart card” can enter.

The expenditure has some politicians and activists up in arms, with members of opposition parties calling it “shocking”.

Imagine yourself as the chief of an airline company. Here’s how things look there at a glance:

- You’re running an accumulated loss of 200 billion rupees (about $3.6 billion)

- You employ some of the best-paid pilots in the world. They have been known to go on strike whenever they want.