First food: business of taste
Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it
India
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Sharks being killed: Cosmetic industry gains (Editorial)
Environmental management does not mean changing your light bulbs to use less energy. It means looking at everything you use to see what is beingdestroyed. Have you ever looked at the ingredients in your make up or lotions? Does your moisturizer or lipstick carry the word squalene in the ingredient list? If your answer is yes, then you are partly responsible for destroying the oceans. Squalene is oil derived from the liver of deep-sea sharks. 270,000 sharks are killed every day just for their fins and oil. The oil from their livers goes to the cosmetic industry and the fins go for soup. This enormous and mindless genocide has made 307 species of sharks endangered. In fact, the total number of sharks left in the ocean is ten percent of what they were in 1950. Deep-sea sharks (those living in ocean depths of 300 to 1500 metres) have especially large reserves of squalene since their livers comprise one-third of the weight of the entire animal. So, most deep-sea sharks are caught only for their oil. The excessive catching of these sharks has caused the dramatic population declines of certain species. Some repeatedly targeted shark species are the Aizame shark (dog fish) Leafscale Gulper Shark, and the Gulper, Kitefin and Portuguese dogfish which live between 1300 to 1500 m below sea level. Deep sea sharks grow very slowly, mature late in life and have only a few young in their entire lives. They take long breaks between reproductive cycles, rendering them extremely vulnerable to over-fishing. These sharks are a target species in many industrial fisheries and are frequently caught by fishermen targeting other species. As a result deep sea sharks are at extreme risk and their numbers will take long to recover. The ocean is a very fragile ecosystem. Sharks are apex predators and oceanic food chains are dependent on them. The ocean will implode without predators and our dependence on ocean creatures will impact us tremendously as well. It is immoral to let entire species disappear for the dubious benefits of personal skin specially when there is a renewable alternative in olives. The cosmetic industry has a duty to educate consumers about what they are putting on their faces. Squalene is an oil used in cosmetic products ranging from anti aging creams to lip-gloss to give them a smooth finish and make your skin glisten. It is found in all animals, humans and some plants. It is the sebum oil that your body produces at the root of its hair. In fact it is the same composition as ear wax so it would be cheaper to use that rather than killing such an important species and rubbing its liver oil into your skin. The point is, it is unnecessary. It is not a vitamin or a mineral, it is just oil. Shark-based squalene has a readily available substitute in the market that comes from a purely vegetable origin. Squalene can be obtained from olives and it is of better quality than animal-based squalene and is less expensive as well. Squalene is also found in amaranth seeds, rice bran, wheat germ, fungi and date palm. Vegetable derived squalane is cheaper to produce, more stable against oxidation, of a higher food grade and more compatible with skin than that produced from shark-liver. Oceana is the world's largest international ocean environmental group and is campaigning to end the use of squalene in cosmetic products. As a result some companies have promised to stop using it from this year. Unilever has promised to replace shark derived squalene with plant oil in Ponds and Dove by April 2008 ( However they will still use it in other products). With this decision, Unilever has joined other European-based cosmetic companies that informed Oceana that they do not use this product from threatened animals and prefer sustainable plant-based sources. L'Oreal is also phasing-out products containing shark-based squalene. Other companies are Boots, Clarins, Sisley and La Mer (an Estie Lauder brand. Squalene 'Health Capsules' are another scam. Fly by night companies use the internet to advertise 'pure squalene oil' and 'squalene capsules' making claims about its anti-oxidant properties something consistently debunked by scientists. Among the nonsensical claims made, are those saying that sharks defend themselves therefore their liver oil will make the human body defend itself (I actually read this on an Australian selling site). Other claims are that squalene helps protect against substances that weaken or damage our natural defense systems. There is no clinical evidence to support this. It is is an oil which keeps skin soft - mustard, coconut, olive and all the other oils do. When the cosmetic industry talks about corporate social responsibility, they should start with using ingredients responsibly. Here is no point killing part of the earth and then giving a few dollars to feed children in Ethiopia or creating AIDS awareness. (To join the animal welfare movement contact gandhim@nic.in).
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Jute industry seeks ban on imports from Bangladesh
The jute industry has urged the ministry of textiles (MoT) to impose a ban on the imports of A.Twill and B.Twill jute bags from Bangladesh as part of its qualitative restriction. It has also requested the ministry for quantitative restrictions, whereby imports from Bangladesh will be limited giving a breather to the domestic jute industry. The country imported around 55,000 tonnes of jute products from Bangladesh, Nepal, China and Pakistan during 2006-07 jute season. The government recently made jute and jute goods imports duty free. According to the industry, qualitative and quantitative restrictions are required to be maintained as rules on these line have already been laid down in the Jute Mandatory Packaging Act (JPMA). In a letter to A K Singh, secretary, MoT, the jute industry has pointed out the events leading to the adverse effect faced by it because of the withdrawal of import duty on the crop and items. Indian Jute Mills Association ( IJMA) chairman, Sanjay Kajaria said, quantitative and qualitative restrictions need to be imposed to plug loopholes on imported jute bags by certain vested interested persons. Moreover, the restrictions would also ensure the stoppage of import of cheap and non-standard quality of jute bags which are not in conformity with Indian and international standards. The industry feels, unrestricted import of the raw crop and jute goods would be disastrous and therefore should be stopped immediately.
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Due provision will be made for waiver'
Hitting out at the Bharatiya Janata Party, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday blamed the previous regime for the agrarian crisis and inflation, and said the UPA government's "unprecedented' initiative to waive farmers' loans was to meet the "unpaid distress bill' left behind by the NDA government. Replying to the discussion in the Lok Sabha on the motion of thanks to the President's address, he said: "We have done nothing more than pick up the unpaid distress bill, which the NDA government had left behind.' It was the distress of the peasantry that brought the United Progressive Alliance to power, while the NDA was talking of
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BrahMos test-fired
BrahMos, the supersonic cruise missile, on Wednesday lifted off from the Indian Naval ship "Rajput' speeding in the Bay of Bengal and destroyed a target on an uninhabited island in the Nicobar group of islands situated in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago. It was the 15th launch of BrahMos but this was the first time that the missile was fired from a ship towards a target on land. "We kept a target on the sand dunes of the island. It was hit. It was a precision-mission. This is an important mission for us because the Navy is acquiring the capability, with the same BrahMos, to destroy targets on the coast,' said A. Sivathanu Pillai, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, BrahMos Aerospace Private Limited. The previous 14 flights of BrahMos were from ship to ship, land to ship, and from land to land. Dr. Pillai, who spoke from the Campbell Bay island, called it "a fantastic test.' The launch was executed by trained Naval personnel on board the Rajput. The test-firing took place at 10.30 a.m. BrahMos travels at a speed more than three times that of sound and can hit targets 290 km away. It is a joint product of India and Russia. Dr. Pillai said Defence Minister A.K. Antony phoned him up to congratulate the missile technologists of BrahMos Limited, the Defence Research and Development Organisation and Russia on the success. Mr. Antony said it was a major breakthrough in enhancing the capability of BrahMos.
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Farm loan waiver: a closer look and critique (editorial)
A. Vaidyanathan Loan waivers are at best temporary palliatives to the problems facing rural India. Regrettably, the powers that be and the powers that want to be have rarely been willing to confront the difficult and complex problems. The decision to waive farm loans on an unprecedented scale announced in the latest Budget has attracted widespread comment. Almost all political parties have welcomed the move. In fact, most of them were vociferously clamouring for such a measure to relieve the farm sector from a "crushing' burden of debt. The Budget speech has announced the decision to waive farm loans and also estimated the cost (Rs. 60,000 crore) that government has to bear. It does not spel l out the basis of the estimate nor of the institutions, loan categories, and class of borrowers that will be covered by the scheme. Several aspects need to be clarified: 1. By definition, the scheme can apply only to those who have outstanding loans with institutions. Nearly three-fourths of all rural households and 60 per cent of farm households report that they do not have any outstanding debt. All households with outstanding debt may not have outstanding institutional debt. Thus the large majority of even farmers will not benefit from the waiver. If only farmer loans are eligible, the proportion of beneficiaries will be even smaller. 2. Both access to institutional credit and the proportion of outstanding debt are skewed in favour of larger farms. Cultivator households with less than 2 hectares account for 85 per cent of all farm households; and report a lower incidence of debt (46 per cent) and of outstanding debt (30 per cent) than the overall average. 3. Institutional loans include direct lending (to meet needs production as well as consumption) and "indirect lending' for allied activities (such as input distribution, trading, transport and processing of farm produce). The latter comprise about half of outstanding loans of cooperatives; 55 per cent in regional rural banks; and a little under half in scheduled commercial banks. There is hardly any justification for waivers on indirect loans. 4. The magnitude of outstanding debt of rural households, going by National Sample Survey (NSS) data, is less than outstanding debt reported by the institutions in the cooperatives and substantially so in regional rural banks. Since both are intended to lend mostly in rural areas, this difference suggests that they also carry a sizeable portfolio of non-household, non-rural loans. 5. The basis of the estimate that the waiver will cost Rs 60, 000 crore is far from clear. There is good reason to believe that a generalised waiver of all overdues will benefit non-rural borrowers to a considerable extent; that the large majority of rural households, including those in the below 2 hectares category will not benefit; and that the magnitude of benefit accruing to them will be considerably less than Rs.60, 000 crore. Benefits in rural areas will accrue to a rather small fraction of households and the magnitude of relief to the beneficiaries is likely to be considerably less than the cited figure. Larger adverse effects These considerations argue for a close second look at the rationale, scope, and intent of the scheme. But it is also necessary to warn the public of the larger adverse effects of waivers on the rural credit system. Supporters of the scheme argue that this one time relief is a necessary measure to address the current agrarian crisis and that it would enable farmers to restart on a clean state. But this has been said every time in the past when such waivers were announced. Experience shows that waivers encouraged borrowers to presume that they can sooner or later get away without repaying loans. It reinforces the culture of wilful default, which has resulted in huge overdues and defaults in all segments of organised financial institutions. The deterioration in the cooperative credit system is, in large measure, due to the conscious state policy of interference in the grant and recovery of loans. Cooperatives have by far the greatest reach in terms of accessibility, number of borrowers, and delivery of credit to the rural population. Concerned by their near collapse, the Central government set up a task force to suggest ways to arrest the trend and revive them. The task force suggested radical changes in the legal and institutional framework essential to enable and induce cooperatives to function as autonomous and self-regulating entities. It emphasised the need to eliminate government interference in grant of loans, recovery processes, and waiving of dues from borrowers. Against spirit of reforms The Central government accepted the recommendations. Extensive consultations with States led to a political consensus to accept and implement the reform package. The Central government has committed to provide around Rs. 18,000 crore to clear accumulated losses over a period of time and linked to actual fulfilment of specified conditions. Most States have since given their formal commitment to this effect and agreed to abide by the conditions for availing of Central financial assistance. Supervised implementation is under way and has made significant progress in several States. This programme thus already covers a significant part of what is being attempted in the current waiver scheme. It is ironical that the decision to go for a general waiver comes even as the above reform programme is under way. It obviously goes against the central thrust and spirit of the reform programme. Since the proposed general waiver is wholly underwritten and funded by the Centre, the need for the kind of restructuring and conditionality attached to central assistance is likely to be questioned. Doubts will be raised and pressures will build to dilute or even to override the programme. It is very important that the government clarifies its position on the status of the current reform programme and how such pressures can be contained so that apprehensions about the prospect of much-needed institution reform in cooperative credit institutions are to be allayed. Loan waivers are at best temporary palliatives to the problems facing rural India. Significant and sustained improvement in the welfare of the rural population is not possible without a faster pace of growth in the rural economy and an improved quality of education and health services. Increased public spending will not achieve this. It is essential to address deeper problems rooted in the overexploitation and degradation of land and water; government policies that encourage wasteful use of resources; the inefficiency of public systems responsible for implementing programmes, regulating the use of common service facilities, and ensuring quality infrastructural and support services. Regrettably, the powers that be and powers that want to be have rarely been willing to confront and address these difficult and complex problems. The chances that their attitudes will change are far less in the current state of intense and contentious competitive politics. That does not augur well for the future of rural India. (Dr. A. Vaidyanathan, a development economist, is Honorary Fellow of the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram.)
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Loan waiver: Cheer without fear
Holding down inflation and interest rates, energising the production function, pushing investments, saving livelihoods, and raising incomes and consumption became the principal objectives of the Budget. The waiver of farm loans is a means to the accomplishment of these goals. G. Ramachandran First things ought to come first. There is an exaggerated view that the waiver of farm loans is senseless and indefensible. The waiver has been criticised on the grounds that it would vitiate the credit culture and exacerbate moral hazard in banking. The critics have no such views when commercial and industrial loans remain unpaid or are waived and written off. The waiver of farm loans is a wholly sensible and defensible decision. The waiver at its worst estimate is expected to cost the exchequer a big sum of Rs 60,000 crore. But it will most likely trigger an increase in gross domestic product (GDP) of over Rs 3,72,000 crore over the next three years. The exchequer will earn at least Rs 44,000 crore if the tax-to-GDP ratio is 12 per cent. The nominal net loss could at worst be Rs 16,000 crore. But there may be no loss at all. The loss could turn into a sizeable profit. There are three reasons for this optimism. First, the loss to the exchequer would be lower when the other robust stimuli to growth act upon the economy. Second, the waiver would break the logjam in the fallow farmlands. It will put crops back on cultivable lands that have remained fallow. A spurt in output will kill inflation. Third, lower inflation will keep interest rates low. Nonperforming assets of banks will rebound smartly. Therefore, law-abiding taxpayers and conscientious borrowers that repay loans have nothing to fear. Smartly managerial The Finance Minister has acquired a reputation for smart and conscientious fiscal management since 2006. He has managed India's fat fixed costs of running government pragmatically. He has outrun the beastly costs by taking a managerial view of tax revenues. He has stimulated tax inflows by lowering the unit excise duty rates. He has raised the threshold of the service tax. The raising of the personal tax threshold level and the slabs expands incomes that can be allocated to consumption. It expands the size of the indirect tax market as a result. Yet, it ensures that the good times of ordinary people will continue. The cut in excise duties applicable to many consumption goods and consumer durables deserves special attention. Compliant and conscientious The boost to consumption may appear scandalous. But the Finance Minister has stayed steadfastly on course to meet the requirements of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act (FRBMA). Ernst & Young, a global accounting confirm, has aptly commented that India has
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Wildlife lobby seeks fresh review of Act
In a hardening of stance, some powerful wildlife NGOs and conservationists have written to the Prime Minister against the government implementing the Forest Rights Act without a fresh review. Wildlife NGOs and individuals who are part of the National Board of Wildlife (NBWL), which is headed by the PM, have complained that the government has not set up a committee to review the Act. "The decision taken at the fourth meeting to have the adverse impacts of the Forest Rights Act looked into by a subcommittee (of the NBWL) was totally ignored (by the environment ministry) and no such sub-committee has been formed,' the letter says. While the members have claimed the PM had agreed to a review, the minutes of the meeting record that a committee would be formed merely to
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Getting It Right
Loan waiver for farmers is a good beginning M K Venu A former bureaucrat who had worked with finance minister P Chidambaram in 1997 summed up the 2008-09 Budget aptly in the words of Edmund Burke: "Mere parsimony is not economy. Expenses and great expenses may be an essential part in true economy'. The bureaucrat in question, former revenue secretary N K Singh, had then designed one of the most liberal tax amnesty schemes for the urban rich with a view to mainstreaming sources of black money generation. The amnesty programme had later prompted even the Supreme Court to comment that such schemes must not become regular practice. Those were difficult times when a prolonged growth slump in much of Asia had led to sluggish revenue collections year after year. Budget targets were rarely met, if at all. Consequently, the government had to resort to amnesty schemes, in desperation, to collect more revenues. Things have dramatically changed in recent years. Asia is fast becoming the engine of growth, and India is a big part of the story. The government's revenues have soared from about Rs 2,54,000 crore in 2003-04 to Rs 5,85,000 crore in 2007-08, more than doubling in four years. With its coffers overflowing, the UPA government has chosen to embark on a "great expenses' programme. And why not? If you could give amnesty to the rich in difficult times, why not amnesty to the poor, distressed farmers when the coffers are full up? The Rs 60,000 crore farm loan waiver may have some design flaws, but no one today should quarrel with the sentiment that agriculture, and the small farmer, do need a leg-up. Clearly, the distress in the farm sector in recent years has created an adverse political climate for the UPA, which has been a bit shy of selling more aggressively the unprecedented GDP growth India has seen in the past five years. It is obvious that you cannot sell high GDP growth and bulging forex reserves in large parts of rural India which are in distress. This had also become a cause of persistent friction between the Congress and the Left within the UPA alliance. All this while, it would appear, it is this political tension which had resulted in the growing communication gap between the Congress and the Left. This may have had its spillover effect even on the nuclear deal. The Left would seem to have been somewhat assuaged by the Budget proposals. The CPM general secretary Prakash Karat has for the first time welcomed the farm and social sector programmes announced by the finance minister. This may signal a temporary thaw in the relations between the Congress and CPM. There is talk that the nuclear deal may also get revived, and the Left may not do any more than make some routine noises over it. The larger issue is one of creating a conducive atmosphere in the political economy to build a consensus for further reforms that are critical for India's economy to sustain a 9 per cent growth for the next five years. The massive farm loan waiver and higher spending in social sector programmes must be appropriately used now to bring down the political opposition to further reforms which are important to propel India to the next level in the globalisation sweepstakes. The Budget in some ways has signalled a New Deal, in which every section of society has benefited, whether it's the urban middle class or the rural poor. But these benefits must now be accompanied with some obligation to work towards a common goal. The one common objective, with which the CPM must have no quarrel, is promoting higher levels of industrialisation. The CPM has also formally recorded in its party document that rapid industrialisation is necessary and there is an urgent need to move people from low yield agriculture to industry. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh too has been placing repeated emphasis on this. The only caution that needs to be exercised is this process must be conducted in a democratic, bottom-up fashion. This was the prime lesson of Nandigram and Singur. The farm loan waiver must be seen as a purely temporary relief and there must be some programme by which farm families locked in low-yielding, suboptimal farm activity are moved to non-farm sectors. After one loan waiver, there is no point in their getting into another loan to do unremunerative agriculture. This would be a recipe for future fiscal disasters. Some permanent institutional arrangement must be designed by the Centre and states together to ensure that inherently remunerative farm activity gets a boost with technical, marketing and financial support. The other farm families must be encouraged through new skill development programmes to move to the manufacturing sector. This needs to be done in a focused manner. The Left Front government in West Bengal has designed an elaborate scheme, after the farmer protests in Nandigram, which seeks to handhold farm families for years after their shift to manufacturing townships built on their land. If done democratically, this is the only way to design a long-term solution to the problems of India's farm sector. A rapidly globalising economy just cannot afford 60 per cent of its population in agriculture sharing less than 20 per cent of the national income. This will remain the biggest point of tension in our political economy. The massive farm loan waiver in the Budget only addresses the symptom. Much more needs to be done to address the root cause. The Rs 60,000 crore loan waiver, at least, brings the whole issue to the centre stage. That is clearly a plus.
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Physical road connectivity between urban consumption markets to farmlands
Storage infrastructure and setting up processing facilities for our farm products are major issues and need immediate attention of policymakers to accelerate agricultural growth, says former power minister and MP, Suresh P Prabhu LACK of adequate infrastructure in the hinterland and poor connectivity are major reasons behind slow agricultural growth. Better communication infrastructure is urgently required to maximise benefits of scientific innovation in enhancing farm produce. Since there is a limit to expanding the farm land, I strongly believe that there is no alternative but to put together a credible agriculture infrastructure to meet the rising demand in India for foodgrains and other agri-products and also make decisive inroads into the external markets. Access to markets Beginning with physical road connectivity between the urban consumption markets to farmlands, setting up storage facilities to processing facilities for our farm products is one big issue that needs to be tackled by the policymakers in the country. Very often, I have witnessed heated debates in the Parliament on farmers' issues. Inadequate or lack of farm infrastructure is not limited to just India. It is a phenomenon in the entire South Asian region. Massive investments in building this infrastructure in agriculture and related farm-based industries are the only answer as we make efforts to maximise our productivity from the farmlands. Scientific research and technological innovations would make our investments more productive. Billions of dollars need to be set aside for laying rural roads, setting up cold storage, post-harvest processing units, quality and affordable inputs like seeds, fertilisers and water apart from undertaking massive diversification into horticulture, floriculture and allied areas like livestock, poultry development. Insulating Indian agriculture from vagaries of weather is another big challenge as the infrastructure for water storage, smooth flow up to farm-gate apart from ensuring judicious use needs emphatic focus. Only then the double-digit GDP growth envisaged during next five years would be possible. Common concern Farm infrastructure development assumes a lot of significance as the South Asian region led by India is home to 35% of the world's hungry and 40% of the world's poor. About 70% of these people belong to India. The country's borders with other South Asian countries are often porous for flow of agricultural inputs, products and human resources, but its formal trade, particularly its import with its neighbours, is not as intense. Authentic estimates corroborated by FAO figures project that the country's food production will exceed human food demand and sizeable surpluses of cereals, fruits and vegetables, potatoes and milk will be available, which will help strengthen the proposed South Asian Food Bank once the infrastructure bottlenecks are sorted out. As stated earlier, agricultural growth in recent years has thrown new sectors and regions into prominence. Livestock, fisheries, horticulture, specialty enterprises (spices, medicinal, aromatic, organic) and value-added products illustrate this trend. Market-driven diversification, emphasising the role of the private sector, in a global perspective, has become the new paradigm driving future agricultural growth. Alternative instruments and approaches are evolving to transform agriculture and a very important part of this
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Eco-friendly energy efficient project
Leading power equipment manufacturer, OSRAM, on Thursday announced that it had joined hands with the largest German power generation company RWE to launch their first energy efficiency project in India based on the Kyoto Protocol guidelines at a cost of 150 million Euros. Under the programme, high-quality OSRAM energy-saving lamps will be distributed to around 700,000 households in the Vishakhapatnam region in the first phase. The project will be financed exclusively via CO{-2} certificates under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) based on the Kyoto Protocol for reducing CO{-2} emissions in developing and emerging countries, according an official release here. The energy-saving lamps are being distributed by the local power supply company in cooperation with self-help groups. At the same time, ordinary light bulbs will be collected from the households and sent for eco-friendly recycling. In all, this project is likely to save up to 400,000 tonnes of CO{-2}. "The project together with our partner RWE will reduce CO{-2} emissions in India and help the country keep its energy requirements down. It will also give a broad cross-section of population who would not otherwise be able to afford energy-saving lamps the opportunity to save money,' said Wolfgang Gregor of OSRAM.