Gridlocked in the rush to grow
Newspapers have delighted in reporting a 100km traffic jam outside Beijing could last until mid-September. Road construction is the immediate cause for the gridlock, which stretches as far as Inner Mongolia, Chinese officials have said.
For Indian commuters battling a near-daily gridlock in all the big cities, this is an ominous sign of things to come.
India is adding vehicles at an unprecedented pace, with July clocking the highest car sales on record.
China has already overtaken the United States as the biggest auto market, and Indians are splashing out on cars across segments, from the humble Nano to the uber luxury Jaguar sedan.
But India, despite its stated goal of spending some $500 billion in the five years to March 2012 and double that sum over the next five-year period, has failed to build roads to keep up.
Transport Minister Kamal Nath’s promise to build 20 km of road a day is as full of holes as Mumbai’s roads in the monsoon, and plans for improving public transport have been slow off the ground.
Delhi’s Metro is a success story, but needs to cover a far greater distance before it can take the load off the congested roads.
Filling the gap one brick, one hospital bed at a time
Two stories this week stand out as examples of how entrepreneurs in India are doing what the government and the private sector have largely failed to do.
One is on housing, the other on healthcare, hot-button topics in India, which is struggling to house and heal its 1.1 billion population even as it gallops toward double-digit growth.
Various state governments and real estate firms have made lofty promises of “affordable housing”, but few have delivered.
One man is determined to show he can. Entrepreneur Jaithirth “Jerry” Rao, who headed software firm MphasiS, this week launched a project in Bangalore to build 1,900 homes that will be priced at 450,000 – 1 million rupees (roughly $9,500 – $21,000) each.
Rao’s Value and Budget Housing Corp – floated with a former Citibank colleague – will use lightweight aluminium beams and cast-on-site technology to cut costs.
Top mortgage lender HDFC will provide housing finance for the project, which will be replicated in cities including Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, the NCR and Navi Mumbai, which are more often in the news for luxury residential projects looking to outdo Dubai.
Rao’s project comes on the heels of a similar one launched by entrepreneur Ramesh Ramanathan’s Janaadhar Constructions, which is building more than 500 homes priced at 500,000 rupees or less.
Should NRIs get voting rights?
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seems to have set the ball rolling for granting voting rights to Non Resident Indians.
“I recognise the legitimate desire of Indians living abroad to exercise their franchise and to have a say in who governs India,” Singh said at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas meet in New Delhi.
According to reports, the law ministry is working on amending the Representation of the People Act to include those living overseas as citizens.
While seeking the active involvement of NRIs with their home country is the aim of this move, yet for many, the very fact that they left the country to seek life elsewhere doesn’t seem to shore up their right to vote.
Is it fair to people who are living in the country itself?
It can be said that people who are residents have the maximum stake in who should rule the country. Seeking a green card is the dream of many a middle-class Indian living abroad but should that be coupled with voting rights as well?
Moreover, it is not clear whether giving voting rights to NRIs will make them more involved with politics and other issues at home, as the PM intends.
The author of this article is merely ignorant of the terms that he ought to have used in his article’s title.
An NRI is a “Non-Resident Indian” — she is an Indian who is, for whatever reasons, living outside the borders of India for a prolonged period of time. The contention for voting rights is not for NRIs whose voting rights was never revoked. In fact, if an NRI so wishes, he may go to the nearest Indian consulate or embassy and cast his vote.
The question is that of OCIs — Overseas Citizens of India. An OCI is one who has renunciated Indian citizenship and has become the citizen of a different country. For all practical purposes an OCI card grants it’s holder all rights that a citizen has, except that he may not vote, or buy plantation or agricultural land. To be candid, while the OCI card does mention that she may not buy plantations or agricultural land, it makes no mention as to the the individual’s voting rights — it is almost implied.
Attacks on Indians in Australia: racist or recessionist?
A spate of attacks on Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney has seen the Indian media accuse Australia of being a racist nation.
Newspaper articles warning of a culture of “curry bashings” in Australia have sparked off debate and people around the world have spoken out against the attacks in online forums.
Some insist the majority of attacks may have been purely criminal.
As an Indian studying in the U.S. for the past three years, I am yet to come across any instance of Indians being targeted on the basis of their race.
I have never heard my American friends say anything against Indians or students of any other nationality.
Does that mean Indians are safer in New York than in Melbourne?
The attacks on Indians did take place in Australia, but then they could have happened anywhere.
1. Australia is one from the less racist countries in the world, from the most opened and tolerant countries in the world.
2. The terrorist attacks in New York increased the xenophobia and they racist attacks not only against Muslims but against Jews, Sighs and other foreigners.
3. The rapid change of the synthesis of Australian population, only 35% of Australians said that they come from English ancestors ( 2006 census) and less than 18% of Australians are Anglicans created worries to extreme nationalists.
4. The international financial crisis increased the unemployment and local labors saw that they lost their job not only of cause the financial crisis but because migrants work harder for less money and worst conditions and they took the jobs.
5. last years the number of foreign students increased rapidly , hundred of thousands of foreign students, while the government has allowed them to work many hours per semester. Foreign students work with very low wages in very bad conditions and of cause the financial crisis they have created huge problems to local unskilled, low income labors. It is the unskilled, non educated people who become racists and attack the students or migrants.
6. For these reasons and much more has created a dangerous combination of conditions which expressed not only with racist attacks but with many other ways, including the increase of criminal attacks.
7. There are many studies mainly from Western Sydney University and from Australian National University about the race discrimination in Australia and especially in NSW, Victoria and Queensland. We know from these studies that the race discrimination exist and for some ethnic groups as Lebanese in Sydney or Muslims or Asians is very high, higher than the race discrimination against blacks in USA .
8. Unfortunately, Australian governments, Federal or states, Liberal or ALP instead to try to support the victims of race discrimination, instead to try to minimize the race discrimination they try to limit migrant’s role in Australia. The attacks against multiculturalism from federal governments, Liberal and ALP, the citizenship test are sound proves.
9. There is a study from the Western Sydney University about the attacks against Muslims, you can find it in a report of the Australian Human Rights Commission, from this study we learned that more than 90% of attacks against Muslims comes from Anglos, although they are less than 35% of the population, according to 2006 census.
10. Without doubt most racist attacks comes from extrem nationalists, white supremacists etc.
11. Unfortunately many migrants or foreign students do not trust the police and they do not report the attacks at all or on time, this is not helpful at all, we can not expect from the police to stop the attacks when we do not inform them for the attacks.
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide
Barack Obama — it seems he’s India’s choice too
It’s not hard to see why Indians would be interested in an election thousands of miles away. Many see Barack Obama’s victory in the presidential poll as a sign that America has finally transcended the question of race and changed the course of history.
Obama may have won by a landslide in the U.S. but going by the number of Indians rooting for him at New Delhi’s American Center on Wednesday, it seemed a useless exercise to gauge his support base in India.
I was hard-pressed to find a John McCain supporter among the many students and guests thronging the lawns of the Center as election results trickled in.
The McCain-Palin pavilion and a Republican elephant made of plastic balls stood forlorn as people posed for pictures with cutouts of Obama and Democrat running-mate Biden in a courtyard festooned with red, blue and white balloons.
When the umpteenth American citizen told me she had voted for Obama, I just shrugged my shoulders in despair. Did no one vote for McCain?
“Go to the Embassy and you might find one,” she quipped. “I don’t know if they will admit it any more though.”
Given Obama’s campaign promise of ending tax breaks for companies that ship U.S. jobs overseas and reducing the number of H1B visas issued to foreign workers, I would have thought McCain would be the obvious choice at least for Indians.
Our heartiest Congrats and our Best wishes for the New Responsibility ,dear Obama
