Exclusive: WHERE’S THE NEW DEAL?

By L K Advani

In his letter asking me to contribute a brief piece for the special edition of the HNN to be published on the occasion of the UPA government’s Interim Budget, HNN has observed: “You may recall the BJP had coined the term Gross Domestic Happiness during its stewardship of the NDA government.”

I do recall that five years back, on February 3, 2004, the then finance minister, Mr Jaswant Singh presented to Parliament the NDA government’s Interim Budget. It was in this budget speech that Jaswant Singh had remarked his budget was not about economic development alone. “This is a political statement too”, he said and added, “it seeks Gross National Contentment.” Jaswant Singh’s coinage was slightly different from the one ET editor has used. But in substance, it is the same.

In this article I am expected to evaluate where the UPA stands against “the standard of Gross Domestic Happiness”, conceived by the NDA.

I have come across last week an excellent book titled Happier by one of the most popular teachers in Harvard’s recent history, Dr Tal Ben Shahar. The back cover of the book poses the question: Can you be happy? and answers it affirmatively saying: “One out of every five Harvard students has lined up to hear Tal Ben Shahar’s insightful and inspiring lectures on that ever- elusive state: HAPPINESS”. The book describes happiness as the “ultimate currency”. The author adds: “Wealth, fame, admiration and all other goals are subordinate and secondary to happiness; whether our desires are material or social, they are means toward one end: happiness.” This is true of an individual; this is equally true of society. In a way, Jaswant Singh’s choice of the word ‘contentment’ was wider, and more fulfilling than even happiness.

Very soon the country is going to elect its 15th Lok Sabha. Even though the government continues to be in a state of denial, the economic situation in the country is grave.

On Saturday last I had an interaction with a group of distinguished economists who not only expressed deep concern about the present state of the economy but kept emphasising that the worst was yet to come. My colleague Yashwant Sinha quipped: “Well, if in May 2009, the people of India do give us a mandate, after this interaction with experts like you, we cannot say we had not been warned!”

When the NDA government left in 2004 and the UPA government assumed office, the economy was buoyant. The UPA government’s Economic Survey of 2004 showered fulsome praise on the state of the economy. The Survey said: “The economy appears to be in a resilient mode in terms of growth, inflation and balance of payments, a combination that offers large scope for consolidation of the growth momentum with continued micro-economic stability.”

The NDA government started with 5% growth in 1998 and left with 8.5% growth. The UPA started with 8.5% and will leave at 6% or even lower. These statistics apart, can our country forget that in these last five years of UPA rule we have had tens of thousands of farmers committing suicide — and all in Congress-ruled states like Maharashtra and Andhra? If happiness is regarded as the ultimate currency, suicides can only be the ultimate curse that can be inflicted on a human being!

The UPA had come to power in 2004 on the promise that they would radically change the life of the aam admi. The first three years of the UPA rule did affect the aam admi’s life radically. Prices of all essential commodities kept soaring in a manner as to make the common man’s life miserable. That problem persists still. On top of that has come unemployment of frightening dimensions.

Two days back I saw a news item in a Mumbai daily in which a young boy retrenched by the IT company for which he was working told his mother that he had decided to commit suicide. The upshot of it was that both mother and son committed suicide.

The UPA government’s track record on the internal security front has been abysmal. The spate of terrorist attacks during its five-year term, more particularly the horrendous Mumbai tragedy in November last has created a scare in the country and has made some foreign countries issue advisories to prospective tourists to avoid India.

So if the UPA’s tenure were to be assessed by the measuring rod that happiness provides, I can only say that farmers suicides plus inflation plus unemployment plus terror makes this the worst government the country has experienced in many many years. The NDA government’s sixyear term had ushered in confidence and hope about the future. As the UPA government’s tenure is about to end, I regret to say there is only uncertainty and despair.

Budget Analysis: 09-10 NOFAT HEN

By M H Ahssan

The chest-thumping was predictable, and the choice of priorities, unsurprising. With downturn, rising unemployment, a plunging stock market and a crisis of business confidence dominating the headlines, the consummate politician in Pranab Mukherjee could not have failed to realise that harping on the negatives will only make matters worse, economically and politically.

With positives hard to come by, deflection offered a better choice. Not surprisingly, Mukherjee, who has been in the roller coaster of Indian politics for the past five decades and is standing in as finance minister as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who holds the finance portfolio, recuperates after heart surgery, sent out a message that nothing will detract the Congress from its preoccupation with rural India.

It was not that he was oblivious to reality. The usual homilies to the tough economic climate were there. Mr Mukherjee conceded that India faced a worrying fiscal situation — the fiscal deficit will be 6% of gross domestic product.

After the delimitation exercise, which saw the number of constituencies in cities on the rise, there were expectations that the ruling Congress-led coalition will focus on urban dwellers. But if the government’s interim budget — viewed by many as the Congress’ framework document for the Lok Sabha poll manifesto — is anything to go by, the ruling party will look at ‘Bharat’ rather than ‘India’ to harvest votes when elections are held later this summer.

The government nearly doubled funding for its National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, a flagship scheme that seeks to provide rural folk some form of livelihood security, to Rs 31,000 crore from Rs 16,000 crore, but the budget speech lacked any similar scheme to alleviate rising urban unemployment.

He dwelt at length on the UPA government’s track record in sectors such as agriculture, rural development, education and health. “Never losing sight of our commitment to the welfare of the ‘aam admi’ and recognising that 60% of our population lives in villages, focused attention has been given to these sectors,” Mr Mukherjee said.

That said, there was little clarity on a long-pending farm insurance scheme. In his speech, the acting finance minister emphasised that the government’s main priority was to insulate the rural population from the effects of the downturn. The government has increased subsidies, upsetting fiscal conservatives.

But Mr Mukherjee indicated little patience for their views. “Extraordinary circumstances merit extraordinary measures. Our government decided to relax the FRBM (fiscal responsibility and budget management) targets in order to provide the much-needed boost to counter the situation created by the global financial meltdown,” he said. Acknowledging the impending elections, Mr Mukherjee also stressed that only the Congress has the knowledge, experience and wisdom to steer the economy. “The Indian people have repeatedly shown that they can be relied upon to make sound decisions to secure the nation’s future. They have seen how the ‘aam admi’ has become the focus of the development process. They have also seen how our government has successfully steered the country through difficult times,” he said.

There was some acknowledgement of the role of Congress’ coalition partners too. “I would like to express my deep gratitude to UPA partners and supporters who walked the extra mile with us in this journey.”

The government, heavily criticised after the terror attacks in Mumbai last November, also used the budget to make the point that it had a clear strategy to counter the terrorism threat. In what was clearly an attempt to blunt criticism from the opposition, Mr Mukherjee, who is also the country’s foreign minister and has been at the fore-front of the government’s hard-line stance against Pakistan, announced an increase in defence allocation. “We are going through tough times. The Mumbai terror attacks have given an entirely new dimension to cross-border terrorism. A threshold has been crossed,” he said while hiking the non-plan expenditure to Rs 1,41,703 crore.

But it is in its handling of the economy that the government will be grilled with inconvenient questions in the weeks to come. Under pressure from the Congress president and allies, it has been tossing around money like confetti. The country’s deficit is already one of the world’s worst. Treating the exchequer as a over-generous candy dispenser may not be enough to win the polls.

Asthma could start in the womb, says study

By Sarah Williams

Children born in heavy traffic areas could be at greater risk of developing asthma due to genetic changes brought on by pollution and acquired in the womb, researchers said.

The new study conducted by researchers from the University of Cincinnati (UC) and Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health is published in the journal PLoS ONE.

The researchers studied umbilical cord blood from New York City children, and discovered evidence of a possible new biomarker — an epigenetic alteration in the gene ACSL3 — associated with prenatal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). They pointed out that such chemical compounds are created as byproducts of incomplete combustion from carbon-containing fuels, resulting in high levels in heavy-traffic areas. Past studies have linked exposure to PAHs to diseases like cancer and childhood asthma.

The researchers said that their latest finding provides a potential clue for predicting environmentally related asthma in children, particularly those born to mothers who live in high-traffic areas while pregnant.

The team claim that theirs is the first study to examine the effects of prenatal ambient air pollutant exposure on epigenetic changes — which may disrupt the normal functioning of genes by affecting their expression but do not cause structural changes or mutations in the genes-linked to asthma.

Working in collaboration with researchers from Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, the team studied the relationship between prenatal PAH exposure and childhood asthma, hypothesizing that transplacental exposure to PAHs could “reprogram” foetal genes and lead to airway inflammation or asthma during childhood.

“Our data support the concept that environmental exposures can interact with genes during key developmental periods to trigger disease onset later in life, and that tissues are being reprogrammed to become abnormal later,” says Shuk-mei Ho, senior author of the paper, chair of UC’s Department of Environmental Health and the director of the Center for Environmental Genetics. The researchers used biological specimens from the CCCEH birth cohort of mothers and children living in Northern Manhattan and the South Bronx, and analysed umbilical cord white blood cell samples from 56 children for epigenetic alterations related to prenatal PAH exposure.

Asthma could start in the womb, says study

By Sarah Williams

Children born in heavy traffic areas could be at greater risk of developing asthma due to genetic changes brought on by pollution and acquired in the womb, researchers said.

The new study conducted by researchers from the University of Cincinnati (UC) and Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health is published in the journal PLoS ONE.

The researchers studied umbilical cord blood from New York City children, and discovered evidence of a possible new biomarker — an epigenetic alteration in the gene ACSL3 — associated with prenatal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). They pointed out that such chemical compounds are created as byproducts of incomplete combustion from carbon-containing fuels, resulting in high levels in heavy-traffic areas. Past studies have linked exposure to PAHs to diseases like cancer and childhood asthma.

The researchers said that their latest finding provides a potential clue for predicting environmentally related asthma in children, particularly those born to mothers who live in high-traffic areas while pregnant.

The team claim that theirs is the first study to examine the effects of prenatal ambient air pollutant exposure on epigenetic changes — which may disrupt the normal functioning of genes by affecting their expression but do not cause structural changes or mutations in the genes-linked to asthma.

Working in collaboration with researchers from Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, the team studied the relationship between prenatal PAH exposure and childhood asthma, hypothesizing that transplacental exposure to PAHs could “reprogram” foetal genes and lead to airway inflammation or asthma during childhood.

“Our data support the concept that environmental exposures can interact with genes during key developmental periods to trigger disease onset later in life, and that tissues are being reprogrammed to become abnormal later,” says Shuk-mei Ho, senior author of the paper, chair of UC’s Department of Environmental Health and the director of the Center for Environmental Genetics. The researchers used biological specimens from the CCCEH birth cohort of mothers and children living in Northern Manhattan and the South Bronx, and analysed umbilical cord white blood cell samples from 56 children for epigenetic alterations related to prenatal PAH exposure.

Asthma could start in the womb, says study

By Sarah Williams

Children born in heavy traffic areas could be at greater risk of developing asthma due to genetic changes brought on by pollution and acquired in the womb, researchers said.

The new study conducted by researchers from the University of Cincinnati (UC) and Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health is published in the journal PLoS ONE.

The researchers studied umbilical cord blood from New York City children, and discovered evidence of a possible new biomarker — an epigenetic alteration in the gene ACSL3 — associated with prenatal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). They pointed out that such chemical compounds are created as byproducts of incomplete combustion from carbon-containing fuels, resulting in high levels in heavy-traffic areas. Past studies have linked exposure to PAHs to diseases like cancer and childhood asthma.

The researchers said that their latest finding provides a potential clue for predicting environmentally related asthma in children, particularly those born to mothers who live in high-traffic areas while pregnant.

The team claim that theirs is the first study to examine the effects of prenatal ambient air pollutant exposure on epigenetic changes — which may disrupt the normal functioning of genes by affecting their expression but do not cause structural changes or mutations in the genes-linked to asthma.

Working in collaboration with researchers from Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, the team studied the relationship between prenatal PAH exposure and childhood asthma, hypothesizing that transplacental exposure to PAHs could “reprogram” foetal genes and lead to airway inflammation or asthma during childhood.

“Our data support the concept that environmental exposures can interact with genes during key developmental periods to trigger disease onset later in life, and that tissues are being reprogrammed to become abnormal later,” says Shuk-mei Ho, senior author of the paper, chair of UC’s Department of Environmental Health and the director of the Center for Environmental Genetics. The researchers used biological specimens from the CCCEH birth cohort of mothers and children living in Northern Manhattan and the South Bronx, and analysed umbilical cord white blood cell samples from 56 children for epigenetic alterations related to prenatal PAH exposure.

Rural focus excites microfinance sector

By M H Ahssan

Although the interim budget does not contain any specific step for rural entrepreneurs, the government’s focus on rural development has brought cheer to micro-finance institutions (MFIs).

“The budget has a definite focus on rural India with a commitment to financial inclusion with increased job opportunities, better housing, infrastructure and a 50% reduction in BPL population by 2014,” said M R Rao, COO of SKS Microfinance. “This is in line with the mandate of MFIs and will mean an accleration in our efforts.’’

The budget’s reiteration of the decision to set up the Unique Identification Authority of India under the Planning Commission — a move notified last month — and the plan provision of Rs 100 crore for this has also excited MFIs.

“Establishing such a universal identity system will enable the 70% of Indian population involved in the informal sector obtain access to government schemes. In particular, this identity will facilitate financial inclusion of the masses — which is currently constrained by KYC (knowyour-client) norms,’’ said P N Vasudevan, MD of Equitas Micro Finance. The trouble is also that the rich and powerful in rural areas manage to corner a lot of the benefits for themselves.

Many of them, for instance, join multiple self-help groups, giving different addresses, and raise money from all of them. “They get this money for nominal interest rates like 7% which they put in chit funds where they get returns of 30% or more. This is a big fraud on the system. A biometric identity card can ensure that benefits go to the right people,” says V S Somanath of Nano Ventures, a MFI.

MFIs support income generating activities of its members including livestock, agriculture, trade (such as vegetable vending), production (from basket weaving to pottery) and new age businesses (beauty parlour to photography).

“Overall the budget is aimed in the right direction and with a larger focus on execution excellence and involvement of private sector in delivery, the true benefits of inclusive economics can percolate to the people at the bottom of the pyramid and thereby enable a more sustainable economic development,” said Vasudevan.

Rural focus excites microfinance sector

By M H Ahssan

Although the interim budget does not contain any specific step for rural entrepreneurs, the government’s focus on rural development has brought cheer to micro-finance institutions (MFIs).

“The budget has a definite focus on rural India with a commitment to financial inclusion with increased job opportunities, better housing, infrastructure and a 50% reduction in BPL population by 2014,” said M R Rao, COO of SKS Microfinance. “This is in line with the mandate of MFIs and will mean an accleration in our efforts.’’

The budget’s reiteration of the decision to set up the Unique Identification Authority of India under the Planning Commission — a move notified last month — and the plan provision of Rs 100 crore for this has also excited MFIs.

“Establishing such a universal identity system will enable the 70% of Indian population involved in the informal sector obtain access to government schemes. In particular, this identity will facilitate financial inclusion of the masses — which is currently constrained by KYC (knowyour-client) norms,’’ said P N Vasudevan, MD of Equitas Micro Finance. The trouble is also that the rich and powerful in rural areas manage to corner a lot of the benefits for themselves.

Many of them, for instance, join multiple self-help groups, giving different addresses, and raise money from all of them. “They get this money for nominal interest rates like 7% which they put in chit funds where they get returns of 30% or more. This is a big fraud on the system. A biometric identity card can ensure that benefits go to the right people,” says V S Somanath of Nano Ventures, a MFI.

MFIs support income generating activities of its members including livestock, agriculture, trade (such as vegetable vending), production (from basket weaving to pottery) and new age businesses (beauty parlour to photography).

“Overall the budget is aimed in the right direction and with a larger focus on execution excellence and involvement of private sector in delivery, the true benefits of inclusive economics can percolate to the people at the bottom of the pyramid and thereby enable a more sustainable economic development,” said Vasudevan.

Rural focus excites microfinance sector

By M H Ahssan

Although the interim budget does not contain any specific step for rural entrepreneurs, the government’s focus on rural development has brought cheer to micro-finance institutions (MFIs).

“The budget has a definite focus on rural India with a commitment to financial inclusion with increased job opportunities, better housing, infrastructure and a 50% reduction in BPL population by 2014,” said M R Rao, COO of SKS Microfinance. “This is in line with the mandate of MFIs and will mean an accleration in our efforts.’’

The budget’s reiteration of the decision to set up the Unique Identification Authority of India under the Planning Commission — a move notified last month — and the plan provision of Rs 100 crore for this has also excited MFIs.

“Establishing such a universal identity system will enable the 70% of Indian population involved in the informal sector obtain access to government schemes. In particular, this identity will facilitate financial inclusion of the masses — which is currently constrained by KYC (knowyour-client) norms,’’ said P N Vasudevan, MD of Equitas Micro Finance. The trouble is also that the rich and powerful in rural areas manage to corner a lot of the benefits for themselves.

Many of them, for instance, join multiple self-help groups, giving different addresses, and raise money from all of them. “They get this money for nominal interest rates like 7% which they put in chit funds where they get returns of 30% or more. This is a big fraud on the system. A biometric identity card can ensure that benefits go to the right people,” says V S Somanath of Nano Ventures, a MFI.

MFIs support income generating activities of its members including livestock, agriculture, trade (such as vegetable vending), production (from basket weaving to pottery) and new age businesses (beauty parlour to photography).

“Overall the budget is aimed in the right direction and with a larger focus on execution excellence and involvement of private sector in delivery, the true benefits of inclusive economics can percolate to the people at the bottom of the pyramid and thereby enable a more sustainable economic development,” said Vasudevan.