Bharat Rakshak

I had the opportunity to take a tour through the area with a local guide who showed us a sampling of the various enterprises. Befitting India's industrial heritage, there are a large number of small garment manufacturing shops in which men and women work sewing machines and do hand finishing work. Weaving and embroidery businesses are clustered nearby.

Far less expected is the number of recycling businesses. For such a dirty place, Dharavi is a mecca of "clean" industry. If a product can be reused, someone is probably recycling it there.

Plastic comes in myriad forms from all over the Mumbai region. Scores of workers sort the plastic into different types and colors and use machinery that is produced in the slum to process plastic pellets and plastic wire. These pellets and wire are then sold in bulk back to larger industrial users in India.

Industrial sized cooking oil tins arrive by the truckload on a daily basis to be scrubbed, sanitized (frighteningly, often by someone hand-dipping the can into a boiling vat of water), and reshaped before a return trip to local food processors.

Computer keyboards sit in large piles, waiting to be picked apart to sort the plastic from the metal parts that get sent to different recycling facilities.

The Guardian reports that in all, Dharavi has an estimated 5,000 businesses and 15,000 single-room factories that produce somewhere between $700 million and $1 billion a year in revenue.

As these businesses continue to expand, Dharavi has become a community linked and supported by entrepreneurship. The local businesses are providing small but significant income improvements to tens of thousands of families. Electricity, running water and televisions are now available to an increasing number of households.

But where do the majority of the increased incomes go? According to our tour guide, most families use the money to pay for private school education for their kids. Often illiterate parents are making an investment in the future. And local entrepreneurs are developing schools that far surpass the quality of local public education. Dharavi may not change much in this generation, but the power of entrepreneurship offers great hope for the next.

The Chief Election Officer, Tamil Nadu, Praveen Kumar, has warned that the preparation of false muster rolls to make payments which are not due, under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, would be punishable under the Indian Penal Code.

Besides being a violation of the model code of conduct, it would also be considered a corrupt electoral practice that would invite action under the IPC.

He has instructed the Commissioner, Rural Development, and District Collectors to ensure that such incidents, which affect the poll process, do not recur.

in comparison, andhra pradesh budget is Indian Rs 128000 crores =28 b$ (at 45 exchange rate)

we are quite near the indian defence budget = total pakistan budget

The union budget 2011-12, presented to the parliament on February 28, 2011, increased the defence allocation to Rs 1,64,415.49 crore ($36.03 billion)

If the numbers quoted above are indeed true, then i'd love to know where this staggering amount (28 billion$) goes into ?

India’s industrial output grew more than analysts expected in January, supporting economic growth and giving the central bank scope to increase interest rates and fight inflation.

Output at factories, utilities and mines rose 3.7 percent from a year earlier after a revised 2.5 percent gain in December, the government said in a statement in New Delhi today. The median estimate of 24 economists in a Bloomberg News survey was for a 2.9 percent increase.

in the AP budget dont forget to look at the budget estimates of last year and actuals of last year
Budget Estimates 1.11 lakh crores
Actuals 0.85 lakh crores

My question was about the visibility of such a massive expenditure

there would be no plan discipline on the use of these resources and the funds would be invested without reference to any development plan for the region”.

“More importantly, there is no guarantee that this expenditure will be additional since states can divert resources they would have spent on the district to other areas

Depends on what is meant by the "local populace" and who controls the money. If the intent is to use the 26% to set up trusts and tribal councils like those set up for the Native Americans, then the tribe will take care of the problem.

Interesting letter by Arun Agarwal, who has fought endlessly against private mining companies in the Supreme Court..

http://www.scribd.com/doc/36586702/Arun ... on-Dollars

Ignore the ideologican biases against the pvt sector...Just take the data in - only 1.5% of the turnover is currently paid as royalies!

He is essentially right, natural resources are not any pvt individuals', cannot be - they belong to the nation...PSU ownsership is one way of ensuring that..But a more "market friendly" way would be to impose windfall profit taxes or stiffer royalties of the sort that the new bill is proposing..

^^^Yes, the govt had, way back in 2009...But it isnt working - too many loopholes it seems..

For example - look at Sesa Goa' financials - http://sesagoa.com/images/stories/sesag ... FY2010.pdf

For a sales turnover of 4900 crores, it pays roaylty and cess of 112 crores, or about 2%..Criminal!

^^^Yes, the govt had, way back in 2009...But it isnt working - too many loopholes it seems..

For example - look at Sesa Goa' financials - http://sesagoa.com/images/stories/sesag ... FY2010.pdf

For a sales turnover of 4900 crores, it pays roaylty and cess of 112 crores, or about 2%..Criminal!

He is essentially right, natural resources are not any pvt individuals', cannot be - they belong to the nation...PSU ownsership is one way of ensuring that..But a more "market friendly" way would be to impose windfall profit taxes or stiffer royalties of the sort that the new bill is proposing..

Well, in a perfect world the panchayat should be able to take care of it..Unfortunately the amounts of money being talked about here (18k crores in mostly 5-6 states) would probably have most panhayats completely out of their depths to manage...Some sort of institutional frameworks need to be set up for the panchyats to work off...

And the point on the definition of "local populace" is equally important...And is prone to political manipulations...

While there is nothing wrong in increasing the royalty on minerals, it is just another tax. It is not blood money or 'compensation to the nation', etc. It is a tax the company will pass on to the end user. Once we increase our steel production and no longer export this will be Indians who use steel, i.e. everyone. While the minerals are in the earth the minerals have Zero value. The mining, extraction and processing adds value. The royalty is a tax on a value add process. Again nothing wrong in this.

The organizations who demand payments to locals are mostly just rent seeking. Not very different from a mafia. Not that this is wrong in a democratic society. Let us not be sentimental about this.

thought you were supporting NREGA for the specific reason that the money went directly to the panchayats and thus avoiding the traditional corrupt channels

This is very convenient logic. In many cases, tribal land and the resources found on it have been stolen by the Indian state by the refusal to recognize tribal land rights. It makes no difference to the tribals whether one set of fat cats (Indian PSUs i.e. Congress party) benefits more or less than another set of fat cats (state governments i.e. BJP).


This is very convenient logic. In many cases, tribal land and the resources found on it have been stolen by the Indian state by the refusal to recognize tribal land rights. It makes no difference to the tribals whether one set of fat cats (Indian PSUs i.e. Congress party) benefits more or less than another set of fat cats (state governments i.e. BJP).

Those who earn income above a threshold must pay income taxes. Taxes are not fees. Fees involve quid pro quo. They are paid for specific services. There is no such quid pro quo for taxes. They sink into the Consolidated Fund and notwithstanding the parliamentary scrutiny about expenditure out of this Consolidated Fund, there is tax-payer fatigue and apathy about payment of taxes, since no such benefits are seen to flow. These benefits can be in the form of either public goods or collective private goods. Alternatively, these benefits can be equitable considerations of cross-subsidisation. Taxes collected from the relatively rich are used to subsidise the relatively poor. Unfortunately, tax and expenditure policy have been cluttered up and made non-transparent, with confusion about what is being done and for whom

The world over, social programs have made dramatic progress with direct cash transfers. Here the subsidy is directly transferred to the consumer who uses it to buy food (and not necessarily just rice and wheat).
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The Central government does not and cannot deliver food subsidies. For this reason, successful interventions have happened at the initiative of state governments — mid-day meals, cheap rice, universal access, supply-chain computerisation. The food subsidy bill should not restrict potential innovations by states because of mindless adherence to a Central formula.
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The food subsidy bill should be rewritten to confine itself to norms regarding coverage, entitlement and its financial equivalent and grievance mechanisms. States should be allowed to make subsidiary laws and administrative notifications.

According to the provisional estimates by the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) as of March 8, 2011, Maharashtra has been among the top growth performers. In the five-year period between 2005-06 and 2009-10, the state grew at an annual average rate of 10.10 per cent, with most of the surge in the first three boom years. Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh grew at 7.14 per cent every year — an improvement over the previous five years’ performance, but still much lower than the national average of 8.33 per cent. Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh bettered the national average while West Bengal and Tamil Nadu gave lower growth performances.

According to the latest data released by the CSO, Uttarakhand was the top growth performer between 2005-06 and 2009-10 — its 12.82 per cent annual average was higher than its growth in the previous five years. The second highest performance comes from Bihar at 11.74 per cent every year — the turnaround in the state from 2006-07, with construction as the leading sector, is a well-known story. The state has moved dramatically from being the economy with the slowest growth in the period 2000-01 to 2004-05, though it has a huge backlog to overcome. Chhattisgarh and Orissa are the other large states that have grown at a fast double-digit clip over the period, while Haryana, Jharkhand and Gujarat have all turned in growth rates exceeding 9 per cent.

At the other end of the table is Assam, at 6.03 per cent every year, though its growth performance has actually improved consistently over the years from 3.4 per cent in 2005-06 to 8.08 per cent in 2009-10. Growth rates of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan have been in the range of 7 to 7.5 per cent. These are states with large populations and need to catch up with the rest of the country.

Of the 30 states/Union Territories for which the CSO has given estimates for the period 2005-06 to 2009-10, nine have average annual growth rates exceeding 9 per cent and five have growth rates less than 7 per cent. Clearly, almost all states have shown higher growth in recent times, but some states continue to lag and this unevenness can be addressed only by identifying the potential sectors in each state.

Taking the revised estimates into account, Mr Ali now owes Rs. 74,938 crore.

The researchers collected information on 90 countries, including far-off lands from the U.S. to New Zealand and Colombia to Kazakhstan. They also collected data on the country’s excellence in science and technology—the number of patents granted per person and how many Nobel Prizes the country’s people had won in science, for example.

They found that intelligence made a difference in gross domestic product. For each one-point increase in a country’s average IQ, the per capita GDP was $229 higher. It made an even bigger difference if the smartest 5 percent of the population got smarter; for every additional IQ point in that group, a country’s per capita GDP was $468 higher.

Dietary supplements and vaccination to prevent illnesses that reduce IQ would be big factors in improving the economics of developing countries.

Public health (disease reduction during childhood and teenage development and nutrition) ==> (70%) of average IQ ==> IQ determines per capita GDP