SASF – Blogs

An excellent analysis written by, Nimmi Kurian for the Indian Express 1st August 2009.(The writer is an associate professor at the Centre for Policy Research.)

Questions to be asked (Please add more If you feel like )

1) Where does this leave India?
2) Will China become an Imperial power annexing smaller nations to feed its labor demand ?
3)Will a negative population growth rate in China sustain Chinas Economy ? If not then what ? (Reminder : China and India have been touted as saviors in the context of the current economic crises.)
4)Will aspirations of “super power” status be scuttled by a weakened population base ? If so will China of the future be more belligerent in the international arena to achieve this super power status before its eventual collapse?
5) Is a weakened China good for Asia ? (Personally I think not)

China may be taking its first tentative baby steps to change its landmark one-child policy. In particular, Shanghai has indicated a relaxation in the policy by encouraging couples to have two children. This year marks the 30th year of its implementation: Why could China be having second thoughts?

Good reasons. Child-bearing has always enjoyed a millennia-old political and cultural sanction in China; through the eons-long line of dynasties, child bearing was not only encouraged but also actively promoted by the state through preferential policies. In fact, in the ’50s and ’60s, Mao even gave awards to women for bearing many children. Population control was nothing short of heresy in those days, anyone arguing for such curbs was thrown behind bars.

It is ironic that China is rethinking the policy not because it has failed. It is doing so because it succeeded. In fact its success is China’s biggest problem today. Rigorous implementation has seen China’s average fertility rate falling below replacement levels. As a result, China as a whole may be having around 1.4 to 1.5 births per woman, with Shanghai registering a low of 0.96. Official estimates claim that the policy has prevented more than 400 million births since its inception. But this has brought in its wake several disturbing social and economic challenges. As it braces to wrestle with these, the question is, can China retrofit the demographic architecture of the country?

Easier said than done. There is a growing realisation that the cure was worse than the disease. It has resulted in a skewed sex-ratio of disturbing proportions.China’s gender gap has steadily grown worse from a relatively normal ratio of 108.5 boys to 100 girls in the early ’80s to now stand at 123 boys for every 100 girls. This has also gone on to worsen the deeply-entrenched cultural preference for a male child. The Ancient Chinese Book of Songs reads more like a dirge for girls: “when a son is born, let him sleep on the bed, give him fine clothes” but “when a daughter is born, let her sleep on the ground, wrap her in common wrappings, and give broken tiles to play.” The stringent implementation of the one-child norm has resulted in a sharp spike in “gendercide” through illegal prenatal sex determination and sex-selective abortions.

The policy-induced crisis means that the country will have to grapple with a whole set of social, productivity and fiscal challenges. To begin with, growing gender gaps have set off an intense competition for wives. It is estimated there could be as many as 40 million “surplus” men in China by 2020 unable to find a wife. Hence a highly organised criminal network of trafficking in girls and women: anywhere between 2000 and 3000 girls and women kidnapped a year. Particularly perverse is the rising incidence of baby bride trafficking, where armed gangs are kidnapping baby girls for farmers who want wives for their sons when they grow up.

China is already home to half the elderly in Asia, with those above the age of 65 expected to rise to 320 million by 2040. A fast ageing society will also induce a prolonged period of labour pains. It is estimated that China’s labour force could peak by 2016 and structural shortages of labour could become an endemic feature of the economy. Inter-generational tensions are also on the rise as the one-child policy grapples with what has come to be known as the 4-2-1 problem. This means that there will only be one child left in a family to care for two parents and four grandparents.

As these social costs have mounted, China has mounted a campaign to achieve population control through softer, less coercive means. It is unlikely that course-correction will result in a major reversal in policy. Changing course will prove tricky in a country where population control still remains the primary policy goal. To expect China to walk away from this will be both unrealistic and unfeasible.

The Makings of a Police State-Part II at RevolutionRadio.org.

Sibel Edmonds
123RealChange.com

The Discretion Factor & TSA Black Hole

Around 1:00 p.m. on March 9, 2009 I stood in front of the US Air ticket counter in Ft Myers, Florida, and sighed with relief. I had just checked in two suitcases and had an hour and fifteen minutes before boarding my plane to Washington, DC. I was relieved because it is no simple task to make it this far with a teething seven month old baby, two suitcases, a carry on bag, and a diaper bag. However, I was counting my chickens too early.

I joined a fairly long line at the entrance of the TSA security screening station, and did a quick inventory of preparations needed to make it to the other side: My infant girl was securely nestled against my chest inside her baby carrier; I had no liquids in the diaper bag or elsewhere, and that included the bottled water I would need to fix her formula later while on the plane (I had enough time to purchase the water on the other side); I was wearing fairly easy to remove trainers, knowing the difficulty of removing shoes while carrying my infant and holding my boarding passes and drivers license…Basically, based on the Transportation Security Agency’s (TSA) posted rules, I was all set, or so I thought. continue reading…

“Evolving Entente”: Geostrategic Import of the Coming Bay of Bengal Naval Exercise

Ramtanu Maitra

Executive Intelligence Review, 27 July 2007

Come September, India will host a major naval exercise in the strategic Bay of Bengal, located between mainland India, Bangladesh, and the western shores of Myanmar, Thailand, and Malaysia, Indian Defense Ministry officials report.

The war manoeuvre will bring together naval forces from four other countries:Australia, Japan, Singapore, and theUnited States. The 20 warships that will participate include two nuclear aircraft carriers from the United States, the USS Nimitz and USS Kitty Hawk, and one non-nuclear carrier from India, the INS Viraat. In addition, the five-day manoeuvres will also see in action shore-based Jaguar deep penetration strike aircraft of the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy’s Sea Harrier jets and Sea King helicopters from the INS Viraat.

Indian defense officials point out that the location of the planned naval exercise has been chosen to maintain distance from the arc of the Pacific Ocean, and skirts the borders of Russia and China where such moves could arouse Beijing’s sensitivities.

From all available accounts, it can be assumed that the September naval exercise will be the biggest held in the region by far. Last April, the United States, Japan, and India conducted their first joint naval exercises off the Japanese coast. That was a one-day goodwill exercise, as one Indian official pointed out, and did not involve many manoeuvres.

The Mysore, an Indian guided-missile destroyer, along with two U.S. destroyers and three escort ships of  Japan’s Self-Defense Force (SDF), were among the vessels that took part in the exercise off Chiba prefecture (state) on Japan’s eastern coast, according to Japan’s Defense Ministry. No doubt the September exercises will be dramatically different.

A Troubled Area

The manoeuvres will take place at a time and place of great instability, much of which has spun off from the Anglo-American reactions to the 9/11 event. Not far from where the September exercise will take place is the Persian Gulf, the cockpit of the current Iraq conflict, and potential attack on Iran.

The situation in Iraq is deteriorating every day, and the fear of involvement of citizens, if not of the governments of Iraq’s neighbors, in this civil war looms large. The presence of about 200,000 foreign troops, of which 170,000 are from the United States, and almost 30,000 private, armed security forces, mostly from western countries, have not succeeded in drawing down the level of violence which exceeds 100 deaths every day in Iraq.

East of Iraq, the United States and the NATO member-nations have been engaged for over five years in trying to physically eliminate the Islamist Taliban militants, who have been entrenched in Afghanistan since 1996. The invaders’ self-proclaimed war on terror was launched soon after the 9/11 event. continue reading…

by Ramtanu Maitra

India’s six percent-plus “impressive GDP growth rate” over the years has drawn much praise from the West, and its “success” has been attributed to the “magical impact” of free-market liberalization and globalization. What it really means, is that India’s low-wage-earning labor has begun to replace a section of the high-wage-earning workforce of the West. In the process, India, a nation of 1 billion-plus people stricken with utter poverty, is becoming an economic “powerhouse”—exactly the way China became one, the Indian leaders claim.

However, a visit from one end of India to the other would make one realize that India’s GDP growth is driven by only a fraction of its population. Much of the nation remains a picture of rural poverty and urban squalor. Rising social tension because of growing income disparity between a sea of poor and a decent number of middle class, is either not noticed, or ignored, by a callous and rudderless leadership that dots the entire nation. Notwithstanding the illusions of the elites, there are definite signals that some among the many hundreds of millions of poor may not watch the process with benign and dissociated neglect, but instead, could turn violent.

The poverty in India has been exacerbated by the fact that the investors, who are no longer “led” by the powerful and visionary, now invest in those parts of the country where the investment has the maximum potential—a relative term in the Indian context—to optimize profit. As a result, regional disparities are growing fast, involving hundreds of millions of people. Nearly all foreign investments in India go to its six most urban states, with 22 other less-developed states virtually ignored. This gap between cities and rural areas is keenly felt in the suburbs of India’s cities, particularly New Delhi, the capital.

Poverty Galore

The endless poverty is there for all to see; it is not hidden like it is in China. There is no escaping the fact that a handful of “skilled Indian workers,” tied to Western workplaces through telecommunication, will not be able to pull the hundreds of millions out of the grinding poverty they endure. What is needed is leadership at every level, and the most dangerous aspect of India at the present time is that it does not have any.

Lack of leadership hits one square in the face, starting at the municipal level, all the way up to the highest offices in the North Block and South Block of India’s capital. These powerful people have little real understanding of what it would take to make India a nation that cares for all of its people; indeed, they have little intent to achieve such a goal, in any case. continue reading…