MISCELLANY

Official statistics in India suggest that 29 per cent of children in 6-17 years age group are out of school in the country. The country has the largest army of working children. No official estimates are available, though it is surmised that child labourers ranged between 13 million to non-official estimate of 100 million. Several NGOs working in the field have been linking the rampant child labour problem to India’s failure to enact legislation to make the schooling compulsory for the kids in 6-14 years group.

Two Ambani brothers (Mukesh and Anil) can buy up 100 per cent of every company listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange and would still be left with $30 billion to spare. The four richest Indians can buy up all goods and services produced by 169 million Pakistanis and would still be left with $ 60 billion to spare. The four richest Indians are richer than the 40 richest Chinese.
(Farrukh Saleem, freelance Pakistani writer quoted by Indian columnist, Khushwant Singh)

For the first time a book from Botswana wins the “Best in the World” in the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. My Grandmother’s Cookbook received the top award for charity cookbooks in London on April 13, 2008.
My Grandmother’s Cookbook
By Mrs.Roshan Ara Khan
Shamshad Ahmad Khan
Illustrations by Fatema Khan
Foreword in English by the President of Botswana, F.G.Mugae
Published by Zharaa-Naaz Children’s Fund.
This book is to be handed down as a family heirloom. It is published to make a positive difference in children’s lives, in memory of Zahraa-Naaz Hussain, who died in a car accident. There were finalists books from 24 other countries in this category of Charity and Fund Raising Cookbooks.

The Government of India has formulated a policy for setting up Special Economic Zones (SEZ) in India. SEZs are proposed to be specially delineated duty free enclaves for the purpose of trade, operations, duty and tariffs. These zones are self-contained and integrated having their own infrastructure and support services.

India’s industrial growth is dictating its own dynamics that treats farmers and workers as merely subservient classes. The working classes are getting continuously margin-alized. The affluent sections, on the other hand, seek to gain maximum benefits from globalization. Special economic zones (SEZs) are meant to accelerate this process. These would be the enclaves of the world-class infrastructure, with their own ports, airports, power stations and water supply. India’s SEZ law promises the exemption for another five years, and exemption for five years more for units set up with reinvested profits. The developers of the zones get tax breaks for 10 years. The core manufacturing area of SEZs would be only 25-30 per cent of total area.

The SEZs will mainly come up in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Karnataka and Haryana. India is looking at developing more than 350 SEZs with more than Rs.1,00,000 crore investments. As many as 150 of them have got formal approval. Another 129 have been cleared in principle and nearly 200 others are awaiting clearance. Reliance plans to buy nearly 25,000 acres of land from the Haryana government to set up Rs. 25,000 crore multi-products SEZ that will have a cargo airport and a 2,000 MW power plant. Apart from this, Mukesh Ambani, the Reliance industry chairman, has bigger plans. He wants to set up one of the biggest SEZ in India. In association with the Maharashtra government, he wants to set up the two of these zones in an area as large as 14,000 hectares in Navi Mumbai and Maha Mumbai. Both these would be impossible if irrigated land is not allowed to be acquired. Apart from Reliance, companies like Wipro, Infosys, Satyam, Bajaj, DLF and many others are firming plans to set up SEZs. The SEZ rush is on. In the second week of November, Noida in Uttar Pradesh got the okay for eight SEZs.

The sector-specific SEZs would be less than 100 hectares in size, and less than 50 hectares in special category states. SEZs for IT, biotechnology and jewelry could be as small as 10 hectares but with all these facilities. Clearly the mini- SEZs in India will provide no world class infrastructure, and all likely to be simply tax havens. The tax holiday for IT companies is ending in 2009. Moving into mini-SEZs will enable them to get a tax holiday for another decade. IT companies are not infants needing protection. The top ones have sales exceeding $1 billion and operating margins of over 30 per cent. When old industries with a thousand problems pay tax, why not IT?

Will it be a fair deal for farmers?
As protests by farmers in various parts of India created a whirr with activists joining in, the government toned its enthusiasm and determination down a bit saying that agricultural land would not be taken over to build SEZs. The government is touting SEZs as the future islands of excellence. But at what cost will it be achieved? As thousands of acres of agricultural land are converted into concrete jungles, how will it affect food security? Will the farmers who are ready to give off their land get a fair deal? Most of them fear they will get peanuts compared to what the developers will make.

Will our SEZs be Maquiladora?
US transnational companies shift their factories to such countries where the tax collection is lax, environmental checks are absent and labour is cheap. So lot of US MNCs have set up plants in Mexico’s maquiladora zones, something like India’s SEZs, where a worker gets $ 1.64 a day against $ 16.17 in the US, where there are no restrictions on dumping toxic wastes and polluting groundwater and water bodies and no right to workers to form trade unions. Thus Mexicans sacrifice their lives, health and future on the altar of global competition. MNCs pick up sites for their companies where company executives could enjoy year round temperate climate, where Golf courses could be located and where affordable housing is available. For all this the State helps them to select the site. And the site preparation at the state cost help the companies to enjoy benefits which should not belong to them. This is how taxpayers subsidize the MNCs. This is how the game of global competition is rigged. It pits companies against people in a game in which people are bound to lose.

National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector headed by Dr. Arjun Sengupta has submitted its report with a comprehensive proposal regarding the social security scheme for workers in the unorganised sector. The unorganised sector is defined as all unincorporated enterprises owned by individual or households, employing less than ten people. For instance, if a person has a leathe shop, a zari workshop or even a small hotel and employs seven workers, these will fall under unorganised sector. Commission estimates the number of workers in the unorganised sector at 340 million in January 2000 which is around 90 per cent of total employment in India.
The Commission has recommended health insurance which includes hospitalisation costs for member and family up to Rs. 15,000 per year; maternity benefits up to Rs. 1,000 per delivery; sickness cover for earning head of family at Rs. 15 per day for a maximum of 15 days and one time grant of Rs. 25,000 in case of accidental death. Second recommendation is regarding life insurance which provides Rs. 15,000 for natural or accidental death. Commission has also recommended pension of Rs. 200 per month after the age of 60 to all below poverty line workers as old age security. This scheme along with National Rural employment guarantee Act has potential to improve the conditions of below poverty line masses and socially deprived sections. However the implementation of the latter is so far unsatisfactory.

(Source: Vivek Sajal’s article in Sadhbhav Patrika, New Delhi, May 2008)

Only five per cent of the labour force in India has vocational training, which compares poorly with industrialized nations (60 per cent to 80 per cent) or even with major developing countries like Mexico (28 per cent).

Millions of more people in India will be employable if the base of the population widens. It will also boost the productivity of the labour force manifold. The draft National Policy on Skills Development proposes to create a National vocational qualification Frameword, and increasing coverage of vocation to 4,000. The 11th 5-year Plan has taken the first step towards planned investment of two per cent of gross domestic product for training. It will progressively rise to five per cent in the next two Plans.

There are 3.7 lakh nurses in India while the requirement is about 10.5 lakh nurses by 2012 , according to President of India Pratibha Devi Singh Patil (The Hindu)

Egyptian government will spend $ 11 billion on subsidizing petroleum (which will go into running cars of the rich) and cooking gas this year. But it will spend only $6 billion on education and $3 billion on health.

The ministry of Minorities’ affair in its annual assessment for the year 2007-08 has found that Muslim girls have bagged around 62 per cent of the various scholarship schemes initiated by the Ministry last year. On the whole, 67 per cent of the scholarships in the case of the merit-cum-means scheme have gone to the Muslim girls, while it is 58 per cent in the case of the post-matric scholarships.