Political India: Engaging America

From The Hindu

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the American people stood in solidarity with the people of India and honoured those who lost their lives in the Mumbai terror attacks exactly two years ago.

In a statement marking the second anniversary of the attack, in which ten militants went on a commando-style killing spree that claimed over 160 lives, Ms. Clinton said, “As the people of the U.S. gather with family to celebrate Thanksgiving, we pause to remember the horrific attack on innocent men, women, and children that occurred in Mumbai two years ago.”

Reflecting on President Barack Obama’s visit to India earlier this month she said that it underscored the two nations’ shared belief in liberty, democracy, and mutual respect for all people.

Ms. Clinton added that as the people of Mumbai gathered in temples, mosques, churches, gurdwaras, and synagogues to honour those who perished on November 26, 2008, “They send a message of resolve, resilience, and mutual respect that is far louder and more powerful than any terrorist's guns and bombs.”

Labels: 26/11 anniversary, 26/11 attacks, Mumbai terror attack

From The Hindu

While high-level agricultural cooperation between India and the United States has focused on bringing advanced technologies to India, the flow of knowledge is sometimes reversed at the grassroots level and in academic circles.

This week two Indian farmers from Jalgaon district in the state of Maharashtra travelled to Boston, where they told a rapt audience at Harvard University’s prestigious Business School about how they had used drip irrigation to dramatically increase their farm yields.

Speaking to The Hindu, Hemchandra Patil (40) and Rajendra Patil (50) said that at the invitation of Harvard Business School they had travelled to the U.S. to explain how, over ten years, a unique system of drip irrigation farming techniques had helped them expand their farm holdings from between two and 12 acres to nearly 40 acres.

A partner to the Patils in this success story was one of the early pioneers of drip irrigation in India – a company called Jain Irrigation Systems. Dilip Kulkarni, President of the agro foods division at Jain Irrigation, said to The Hindu that while drip irrigation had been relatively rare in India prior to 1985, the company’s founder, Bhavarlal Jain, played a key role in adapting drip irrigation techniques used in large-scale farms in the U.S. to the small farming conditions found commonly in India.

The key technology adaptations involved entailed modification of the drip irrigation system to suit the low-water-pressure conditions in India and also recalibration of the equipment to distribute water across smaller farm holdings.

Mr. Hemchandra Patil said that the efficient use of water that drip irrigation implied had helped him increase his earnings per acre, for example for onion cultivation, from around 10,000 rupees to 40,000 rupees or more.

He added that Jain Irrigation Systems had been instrumental in this process, not only by giving him access to the drip irrigation equipment but also by holding regular technical seminars, usually conducted by an agronomist, on appropriate cultivation methods. The Jain Hi-Tech Agricultural Institute at Jalgaon was the forum for these training seminars, he said.

In response to a question on why drip irrigation was not more popular and the less efficient technique of flood irrigation was widespread, for example, in states like Tamil Nadu, Mr. Kulkarni said that there were several reasons for this.

First, he explained, many farmers held the “wrong idea [that] more water means more paddy.” This was especially prevalent in South Indian states where rice, a crop that is relatively intensive in its use of water, is widely cultivated.

Further, Mr. Kulkarni noted, the cost of drip irrigation could sometimes be prohibitive, especially for small farmers, as it averaged about 25,000 rupees per acre.

However combined with a 50 per cent subsidy from the state government, Jain Irrigation had also evolved a system of providing the drip irrigation system upfront to the farmer and helping the farmer obtain a bank loan for the remainder through a tripartite agreement involving the farmer, the bank and Jain Irrigation itself.

The success of the system, which has also focussed on contract farming and market-access solutions, has not gone unnoticed.

Even before the farmers’ Harvard presentation the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation recognised the transformative potential of the system in giving it the IFC’s Inclusive Business Leadership Award, a rare honour.

Labels: drip irrigation, Harvard University, Indian farmers

From The Hindu

The Pakistani spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, and terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, are being sued by the family of an American couple and their unborn child who were slain by militants during the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008.

The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Brooklyn, New York, on Friday afternoon last week, alleges wrongful death on behalf of Rabbi Gavriel Noah Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, who was pregnant at the time. Both were both gunned down at the Chabad Lubavitch centre, one of the sites in Mumbai targeted by the attackers.

The Holtzbergs were killed even as their two-year-old son Moshe survived the attack, after being whisked off to safety by his nanny, Sandra Samuel. Reports said that the grandfather of Moshe, who now lives in Israel, was one of the plaintiffs.

Media reports added that the plaintiffs, including the relatives of two other victims of the terror attack, alleged that the ISI had aided the 10 men carrying out the commando-style attacks that left more than 160 people dead. An extract from the lawsuit reportedly said that the ISI had “provided critical planning, material support, control and coordination for the attacks.”

Speaking to The Hindu James Kreindler, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said, “We have sued the LeT, the leaders of LeT, the ISI and top ISI people who have been identified as being involved in providing support to the LeT.” He clarified that the government of Pakistan had not been sued.

Mr. Kreindler explained that under the United States’ anti-terrorism law the plaintiffs had the right to sue the defendants in the U.S. Noting that this lawsuit represented “nearly all of the U.S. victims,” of the attack, Mr. Kreindler said that the civil suit sought compensatory and punitive damages of over $75,000, the jurisdictional limit for filings in federal courts.

Mr. Kreindler also said “Obviously, Pakistan is an ally of the U.S. in the war in Afghanistan and our efforts to fight al-Qaeda... We know, however, that ISI has straddled some fences and while Pakistan is certainly cooperating with us, the ISI has used (LeT) for its own purposes.”

He told The Hindu that while the U.S. and Pakistan had a “complicated relationship,” the case had been presented in a “responsible, non-inflammatory and low-key way,” and it would also serve a public function in terms of the fight against terror.

Mr. Kreindler is renowned for his success in leading a civil suit against the government of Libya and its intelligence agencies following the 1988 Lockerbie bombing case, in which a bomb brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland, killing 270 people on board.

Labels: 26/11, Chabad House, Moshe Holtzberg, Mumbai attacks

From The Hindu

Even in the face of partisan bickering in the United States over the approval of an arms reduction treaty, Democrats and Republicans came together last week to address a long-standing claim of underpayment and resource mismanagement brought by the African-American and American-Indian communities here.

On Friday the U.S. Senate passed a Bill that sought to provide $4.55 billion in compensation to the two minority communities. Its passage marks the culmination of an effort by the Obama administration and the 111th Congress to finally settle a backlog of claims relating to allegations of racism and unfair practice in land purchased from African-American farmers and “historical injustice” meted out to the American-Indian community in the management of their funds.

Of the funds earmarked, $1.15 billion has been set aside by the Senate for claimants from the African-American farming community. The money will specifically address the needs of “late petitioners” or farmers who missed the filing deadline in a long-standing class-action suit that was settled back in 1999.

Commenting on the Bill’s passage the Network of Black Farm Groups and Advocates said, “Two years after the provision in the 2008 Farm Bill that provided the opportunity for late petitioners in the Black farmer lawsuit to file their claims against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Senate has finally passed an appropriations bill that will fund the lawsuit. It was a vote of unanimous consent... [and] a momentous occasion.”

An NBFGA official also said that at a time when people had decried the divisiveness that prevailed in Congress the Bill showcased an impressive collaboration between the Republicans, Democrats and the Obama Administration.

In addition to the African-American farmers’ cause the Bill set aside $3.4 billion for the American-Indian community under another long-standing case, Cobell versus Salazar.

According to the Bill’s mandate the funds would be disaggregated as $1.4 billion for settlement of accounting and mismanagement claims and another “$2 billion for addressing fractionation of individual Indian land” the National Congress of American-Indians said in a statement.

The tribes that would benefit from this settlement included the White Mountain Apache Tribe in Arizona, the Crow Tribe in Montana, the Aamodt in New Mexico, and Pueblo of Taos in New Mexico.

Speaking after the Bill passed in the Senate Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said, “With the Senate’s approval of the Cobell settlement and... four Indian water rights settlements, this is a day that will be etched in our memories and our history books.”

Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk added that the water settlements in particular were nothing short of historic for Indian nations as they would meet the needs of tribes as well as neighbouring communities through provisions for sharing shortages and investing in critical infrastructure needs.

The Bill is still awaiting ratification by the House of Representatives and a Presidential signature. President Barack Obama has already indicated his intention to sign the Bill into law and in an earlier press conference described the settlement as “fair” and “just” and said his administration would “continue to make it a priority.”

Labels: African-Americans, American-Indians, Barack Obama administration

From The Hindu

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is poised to launch an unprecedented barrage of criminal and civil charges relating to insider trading against leading Wall Street organisations including investment bankers, hedge-fund and mutual-fund traders and consultants and analysts.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal which quoted unnamed federal authorities, the culmination of a three-year investigations by the FBI will “expose a culture of pervasive insider trading in U.S. financial markets, including new ways non-public information is passed to traders through experts tied to specific industries or companies.”

Authorities also added that the impact of their probe on the financial industry would “eclipse” that of any previous such investigation, especially given their focus on multiple insider-trading rings reaping illegal profits to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.

Two firms mentioned by the government sources, Goldman Sachs Group and Primary Global Research, refused to comment when asked about whether they were being investigated. Goldman Sachs is a major Wall Street investment bank and trading company and Primary Global is a California firm that “connects experts with investors seeking information in the technology, health-care and other industries.”

The Wall Street Journal report also quoted an email from John Kinnucan, a principal at Broadband Research, in which he warned 20 hedge fund and mutual fund clients of a visit by the FBI.

“Today two fresh faced eager beavers from the FBI showed up unannounced (obviously) on my doorstep thoroughly convinced that my clients have been trading on copious inside information,” he said, adding, “We obviously beg to differ, so have therefore declined the young gentleman's gracious offer to wear a wire and therefore ensnare you in their devious web.”

The FBI investigation comes even as U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara of Manhattan, New York, kept up the pressure on the insider trading issue. Exactly a year ago Mr. Bharara brought insider trading charges against 14 high-profile Wall Street bankers and consultants including Raj Rajaratnam of Galleon Management, Rajiv Goel of the investment arm of Intel Corporation, Anil Kumar of McKinsey and Company and Robert Moffat of IBM.

All 14 were charged with participating in insider trading schemes that “together netted more than $20 million in illegal profits,” the FBI said, and that case represented the first time that court-authorized wiretaps were used to target significant insider trading on Wall Street.

Earlier this month Mr. Bharara announced that Ali Hariri, a former executive at Atheros Communications, had been sentenced to 18 months in prison for his participation in the “largest hedge fund insider trading case in history.” In that case the court also imposed a two-year term of supervised release and a $50,000 fine.

Labels: FBI, Goldman Sachs, hedge-fund, insider trading, investment bankers, mutual-fund, Primary Global, Wall Street

From The Hindu

United States President Barack Obama has extended greetings on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism.

In a statement he said, “On Sunday, many around the world will observe the anniversary of birth of Guru Nanak Dev Ji... I send my best wishes to all those observing this extraordinary occasion.”

Mr. Obama also said that this was an occasion to recognise the contributions of Sikh Americans in the U.S. and to reflect on the pluralism that is a hallmark of America. He said, “Sikhism’s principles of equality, service, interfaith cooperation and respect are principles shared by all Americans.”

Underscoring a more universal message embodied in Sikhism he said that as Sikhs celebrated the birth of Guru Nanak, “People of good will everywhere can identify with his teachings on the equality of all humankind and the need for compassion in our service to others.”

Labels: Barack Obama, Guru Nanak

From The Hindu

This week’s acquittal of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (36), a Guantanamo Bay detainee and alleged al-Qaeda member involved in the 1998 bombings of the United States’ embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, has fuelled an increasingly shrill political debate on the Obama administration’s rejection of military courts for such cases.

On Wednesday, a federal district court in Manhattan cleared Mr. Ghailani, originally from Tanzania and captured in Pakistan in 2004, of all 276 murder and attempted murder charges that Attorney General Eric Holder brought against him, and also four conspiracy charges.

He was, however, convicted on one count of conspiracy to destroy government buildings and property and when he is sentenced in late January Mr. Ghailani still faces a minimum of 20 years imprisonment. He is also facing a life sentence – an outcome that U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said he would push for.

An important turning point in the Ghailani trial, a test case for President Barack Obama’s plan to use civilian courts and ultimately close down Guantanamo Bay prison, came last month when presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan forbade the use of evidence from a key witness whose identity was discovered when Mr. Ghailani was allegedly tortured while in the custody of the Central Intelligence Agency.

According to media reports the witness, Hussein Abebe, “would have testified that he had sold Mr. Ghailani the TNT used to blow up the embassy in Dar es Salaam,” and he was described as “a giant witness for the government.” Yet some reports noted that Judge Kaplan had explained that he had found the witness, who testified in a pre-trial hearing, not credible.

The verdict in the case led to sharp criticism of the Obama administration for not persisting with military trials for individuals classified as “enemy combatants.”

Representative Peter King, Republican of New York, reacted to the decision saying, “I am disgusted at the total miscarriage of justice today in Manhattan’s federal civilian court. . . This tragic verdict demonstrates the absolute insanity of the Obama Administration’s decision to try al-Qaeda terrorists in civilian courts.”

However government officials defended the use of civilian trials strengthening rule of law in complex cases relating to U.S. military engagement abroad.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley was reported to have said, “A jury of 12 Americans convicted Ahmed Ghailani of a terrorist conspiracy. Miscarriage of justice? No, it’s called the rule of law. Mr. Crowley added, “The Ghailani case shows America practices what it preaches, protecting our national security through a transparent legal system.”

Labels: Ghailani verdict, Guantanamo Bay, military court, U.S. judiciary

From The Hindu

The next time you accuse someone of having tunnel vision, make sure it is not Ramesh Raskar. The Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is leading a team that is developing a “femto-second transient imaging system”, or a camera that can look around corners and beyond the line of sight.

Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Raskar said the principle behind the device was “very much like a CAT scan”, which takes multiple photographs and used mathematical inversion to piece together images.

He added that potential applications for femto-photography included search-and-rescue planning in hazardous conditions, collision avoidance for cars, and robots in industrial environments. His website notes that transient imaging also has significant potential benefits in medical imaging, allowing endoscopes to view around obstacles inside the human body.

Mr. Raskar's team describes the process using the simple example of a room with an open door. The goal is to compute the geometry of the object inside the room by exploiting light reflected off the door. The device directs an ultra-short laser beam emitted by the “femto-second laser” (femto-second is a quadrillionth of a second, or one-millionth-of-one-billionth of a second) on to the door, from where it scatters inside the room. The light reflected from objects inside the room again falls on the door and is reflected toward the transient imaging camera. An ultra-fast array of detectors measures the time profile of returned signal from multiple positions on the door.

Mr. Raskar says, “We analyse this multi-path light transport and infer shapes of objects that are in direct sight as well as beyond the line of sight. The analysis of the onsets in the time profile indicates the shape; we call this the inverse geometry problem.”

In comments to media, Mr. Raskar added, “It is like having X-ray vision without the X-rays... But we are going around the problem rather than going through it.”

Mr. Raskar said to The Hindu that his team had initial results that they were not sharing publicly yet. The device should be fully developed in the next year or so.

When that happens, it could well revolutionise innumerable routine process based on line of sight.

Labels: femto-photography, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

From The Hindu

Organisations within the World Bank Group of multilateral lenders underestimated implementation challenges and responded to the crisis with “some delay,” according to the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG).

The IEG, an independent body reporting to the Board of Executive Directors of the World Bank rather than Bank management, presented its evaluation of the Bank's activities in a report released this week entitled Word Bank Group Response to the Global Economic Crisis.

While it commended the Bank for demonstrating “preparedness based on its knowledge of poverty impacts, long-term dialogue with country authorities, and ability to expand lending,” it also cautioned that there was a need to strengthen the Bank's ability to act quickly in the event of such crises and its preparedness to carry out financial sector interventions.

The IEG also faulted the private sector arms of the Group, the International Finance Corporation and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, for, respectively, giving priority to protecting its portfolio and for not producing a significant uptake in crisis response outside Eastern Europe.

Speaking to The Hindu about some of the results of the crisis in India and the impact of the Bank's response Vinod Thomas, Director-General of the IEG, said that in India “the global economic crisis triggered a chain of adverse events, starting with a slowdown in India's exports, which spread to production and investment.”

Overall, Mr. Thomas said, India's growth slowed down across all sectors, with the growth rate falling from a peak of 9.7 per cent in 2006–07 to 6.7 per cent in 2008-09. He said the Bank's Global Economic Prospects Report forecasted India's growth as 8.5 per cent in 2010 and nine per cent in 2011.

In terms of the poverty impact, Mr. Thomas told The Hindu that “even with a quick recovery, the crisis will result in an additional 12 million... living on less than a $1.25 a day by 2015.”

However, he added that during the crisis, the World Bank's 2009-2012 country strategy focused on inclusive growth, infrastructure, and the effectiveness of service delivery. Thus, he noted, even as India became the largest single borrower from the World Bank in fiscal 2010, the Bank earmarked $3 billion to support India's domestic response to the crisis.

Notwithstanding the IEG's criticism, Mr. Thomas lauded the Bank's interventions. He said, “The World Bank Group's response has fitted the nature of the crisis – which called for a fiscal expansion to compensate for sharply declining trade and private capital flows.”

Labels: economic crisis, international organisation, World Bank India

From The Hindu

The United States Treasury has agreed to sell a significant share of its stake in auto major General Motors through an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. Through the sale of over 358 million shares that it holds in the company, the U.S. government aims to reduce its stake from 60.8 per cent to 36.9 per cent.

Speaking after the IPO was announced President Barack Obama said that it marked a major milestone in the turnaround of an iconic company and the entire American auto industry. After the sell-off the government would have cut its stake in GM by nearly half, he said, “continuing our disciplined commitment to exit this investment while protecting the American taxpayer.”

Reflecting on his administration's actions to intervene in the auto market at the height of the recession Mr. Obama said that supporting the U.S. auto industry “required tough decisions and shared sacrifices, but it helped save jobs, rescue an industry at the heart of America's manufacturing sector, and make it more competitive for the future.”

The Department of the Treasury said that it had agreed to sell its common stock in GM at $33 per share, as part of GM's initial public offering and if the underwriters' over-allotment option was exercised in full, “the aggregate gross proceeds to Treasury from the offering are expected to be about $13.6 billion, before giving effect to any fees associated with the offering.”

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said that the GM IPO was “an important step in the turnaround of the company and for our work to recover taxpayer dollars and exit this investment as soon as practicable.”

At the end of October the Treasury noted that the cumulative return to taxpayers from the sale of GM stock had reached $9.5 billion, in particular, including the GM's repurchase of $2.1 billion of the Series-A preferred stock issued under the Trouble Asset Relief Programme.

Market commentators said that since General Motors had shown that it could be profitable, “a complete exit by the government could happen even within the next two years.”

Labels: General Motors, New York Stock Exchange, United States Treasury

From The Hindu

While legal protections against violations of religious freedom exist in India, corruption and a lack of sufficient trained police led to the law not always being enforced rigorously, according to a recently released report by the State Department of the United States.

The International Religious Freedom Report 2010, the State Department said that despite government efforts to foster communal harmony, extremist groups continued to view “ineffective investigation and prosecution of attacks on religious minorities” as a signal that they could commit such violence with impunity.

However the report did not completely clear the government of all responsibility for acts of violence relating to religion, in particular suggesting that law enforcement and prosecution was weak due to a “low police to population ratio, corruption, and an overburdened and antiquated court system.”

It argued that some state and local governments also limited religious freedom by maintaining or enforcing existing anti-conversion legislation and by not efficiently or effectively prosecuting those who attacked religious minorities. In particular it noted that there were active anti-conversion laws in six of the 28 states – Gujarat, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Arunachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh.

Outside of India the report specifically criticised the persecution of minority groups in Pakistan. The report said that Christians, Sikhs, and Hindus reported governmental and societal discrimination in the country.

The manifestation of this discrimination ranged from defining as illegitimate the children born to Hindu or Christian women even after they converted to Islam after marriage, to difficulties faced by Hindus in importing books from India and persistent discrimination against Hindus, Sikhs, and Ahmadis in admission to higher education institutions.

The report also presented an extensive list of incidents across Indian states, in which religious freedoms had been attacked. Most entailed attacks by private citizens and groups on religious minorities and their organisations.

The report further quoted data from the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs’ 2009-10 Annual Report according to which there were 826 instances of communal violence, involving 125 fatalities and 2,424 persons injured.

The data also suggested that there were 750 incidents of Hindu-Muslim violence throughout the country in 2009 resulting in 123 deaths and 2,380 injuries, compared with 656 incidents, including four riots, in 2008 resulting in 123 deaths and 2,272 injuries.

However the report also noted some positive developments relating to religious freedoms. In particular it praised the National Foundation for Communal Harmony for providing assistance for the physical and psychological rehabilitation of child victims of communal, caste, ethnic, or terrorist violence.

In a similar vein the report lauded the Andhra Pradesh government for allocating approximately $5.89 million for the Andhra Pradesh Christian Finance Corporation; the Gujarat High Court for directing the state government to resolve the issue of restoring mosques and dargahs destroyed or damaged during 2002 Gujarat riots; the central government for announcing an increase of $32 million to the National Minorities Development Finance Corporation for funding programs for minority welfare.

Overall the national government, led by the United Progressive Alliance, continued to implement an inclusive and secular platform that included respect for the right to religious freedom, the report said.

Labels: anti-conversion laws, communal harmony, Hindu-Muslim clashes, Indian democracy, Religious freedom, UPA government

From The Hindu

The United States and India this week reaffirmed and celebrated an important partnership in the field of education — the Nehru-Fulbright Educational Exchange Programme.

At an event hosted by the Indian embassy here, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said via a televised message that she was “delighted to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Fulbright scholarship programme with India,” adding that it was a programme that had truly enriched and transformed the lives of students from India who had come to the U.S.

Noting that Fulbright student exchanges had led to lasting relationships developed during the course of the programme, Ms. Clinton said that there were more than 15,000 Fulbright alumni from India, notable among them being External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna.

Speaking to The Hindu at the event Sashikala Sriram, a Fulbright Scholar and Principal of Bala Vidya Mandir school in Chennai, India, said that the programme had given her a rare opportunity to understand educational practices in the U.S. and she intended to take some of those insights back to her school when she graduated.

In particular Ms. Sriram said that after extensive visits to the U.S. schools across the country she had been impressed by the strong emphasis on reading as opposed to mere lecturing. She added that she was intrigued by the concept of “cooperative learning” and through her interactions with teachers and students here she had developed some ideas in this area that she would use in the Bala Vidya Mandir.

On the occasions the State Department also issued a statement recalling that during his recent trip to India, President Barack Obama had noted that education was one of the key pillars of the U.S.-India partnership and even as far back as 1950, the Fulbright Program “played an essential role in nurturing established ties and building new relationships by providing opportunities for discourse between the people of the U.S. and the people of India.”

More recently, in 2008 the U.S. and India signed an historic agreement making the two countries full partners in the governance and funding of the Fulbright Program, and in November 2009 President Obama and Prime Minister Singh announced a significant expansion of the Fulbright-Nehru scholarships under the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue, the State Department statement noted.

Speaking at the event India's Ambassador to the U.S., Meera Shankar, said that from being a U.S. funded programme, this Agreement had been converted into a scholarship programme implemented by the governments of both India and the U.S.as full partners. There had also been an increase in the total scholarship amount awarded annually to $ 4.6 million, a 100 per cent increase from the existing level, she added.

Touching upon the broader impact of the programme the Ambassador said, the Nehru-Fulbright Education Exchange Programme “which nurtured educational cooperation at a time when political ties were not so robust, has contributed to transforming the relationship between our two countries.”

Labels: Hillary Clinton, Nehru-Fulbright Educational Exchange Programme, Secretary of State

From The Hindu

Prospects for the successful ratification of New START, the nuclear arms reduction treaty between the United States and Russia, suffered a dangerous setback this week as a key Republican Senator virtually ruled out supporting the treaty during the ongoing lame duck session in the U.S. Congress.

Senator John Kyl of Arizona said in a statement on Tuesday, “When Majority Leader Harry Reid asked me if I thought the treaty could be considered in the lame duck session, I replied I did not think so given the combination of other work Congress must do and the complex and unresolved issues related to START and modernisation.”

Though Mr. Kyl added that he appreciated the recent efforts by the Obama administration to address some of the issues he and his party had raised, the failure to pass the treaty during the lame duck session might entirely deny the Obama administration what is potential one of its most important foreign policy achievements.

If the treaty does not pass before the U.S. Congress reconvenes early next year, President Barack Obama will face an even more daunting challenge since the Democrats' hold over the Senate has been weakened after the elections earlier this month and they will hold only 51 seats in January.

Reacting to Mr. Kyl's refusal to engage on the matter sooner, Vice-President Joseph Biden said: “Failure to pass the New START Treaty this year would endanger our national security. Without ratification of this Treaty, we will have no Americans on the ground to inspect Russia's nuclear activities, no verification regime to track Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal, less cooperation between the two nations that account for 90 per cent of the world's nuclear weapons, and no verified nuclear reductions.”

Mr. Biden also noted the treaty was fundamental to the U.S.-Russia relationship, and critical to the U.S.' ability to provide supplies to its troops in Afghanistan. Further, it had salience in the context of imposing and enforcing strong sanctions on the Iranian government, he said.

Touching upon the quid pro quo element of the treaty between the White House and the Republicans, Mr. Biden underscored the fact that Mr. Obama had agreed to invest $80 billion on the modernisation of the U.S.' nuclear arsenal over the next decade, and, based on consultations with Mr. Kyl, had conceded an additional $4.1 billion for such modernisation over the next five years.

On possible next steps forward, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the administration would continue to engage with Mr. Kyl and others “in good faith... but our message is that the START Treaty should be ratified now.” Mr. Crowley added that the Obama administration had put forward a package that ensured the U.S. a strong nuclear deterrent.

Speaking days before Mr. Kyl revealed his unexpected blockade, Mr. Obama had said about the treaty's ratification, “I feel reasonably good about our prospects. It was voted out of committee with strong bipartisan support ... We have been in a series of conversations with Senator Kyl, whose top priority is making sure that the nuclear arsenal that we do have is modernised. I share that goal.”

Both the President and other senior White House officials such as Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes emphasised the broader foreign policy benefits that the “reset” in U.S.-Russia relations, which the treaty embodied, would bring.

Labels: international treaty, nuclear weapons

From The Hindu

The reform of the United Nations Security Council and India's bid to gain a permanent seat will be a “long and complicated process”, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake has said.

During a briefing on President Barack Obama's Asia trip, Mr. Blake, however, added that the United States was committed to continued engagement on UNSC reform and to a “modest expansion” of permanent and non-permanent seats.

Underscoring that there were numerous other potential candidates for a permanent UNSC seat besides India, Mr. Blake said the question of veto power had also not been resolved.

“I would caution against expecting any kind of breakthrough any time soon,” he said, adding, “We need to have a very detailed and serious conversation with all of our friends who are competing for these seats.”


Iran and Myanmar

On how the U.S. viewed India's approach — said to be divergent from its own strategy — to the questions of Iran and Myanmar, Mr. Blake said: “I think India does understand the importance of taking greater responsibility for some of these very important global issues.”

To a question from The Hindu on what the U.S.' failure to get the military interoperability agreements signed by India meant for the partnership between the two countries, the Assistant Secretary said “India will see it as in its own interest to sign these agreements” as the two countries' military engagement deepened. He added that the U.S. was “not pressuring India” on this matter.

Labels: India, Obama trip, Robert Blake, U.S., UNSC seat

From The Hindu

Food insecurity, for decades the bane of developing countries, has, in the post-recession years assumed worrisome proportions in the world’s most powerful nation – the United States.

In a scathing report on Household Food Security in the U.S., 2009, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has revealed that 14.7 per cent of American households were food insecure at least some time during 2009, including 5.7 per cent with very low food security.

The report further said that in households with very low food security – described by the USDA as a “severe range of food insecurity” – the food intake of its members dropped and eating patterns “were disrupted at times during the year,” due to resource constraints.

While the latest figure for food insecurity and very low food security remained close to their 2008 levels of 14.6 per cent and 5.7 per cent respectively, they nonetheless hovered at the highest recorded levels since 1995, when the first national food security survey was conducted.

Highlighting the significant inequalities in food resource availability across U.S. households the USDA report noted that the typical food-secure household spent a whopping 33 per cent more on food than the typical food-insecure household of the same size and household composition.

Also indicating a racial divide in food security outcomes the report found that the rates of food insecurity were substantially higher than the national average among African-American and Hispanic households.

Further such insecurity was higher among households with incomes near or below the federal poverty line and among households with children headed by single parents, the report said. The USDA report was based on data from an annual survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau as a supplement to its monthly Current Population Survey.

The USDA said that the 2009 food security survey covered about 46,000 households and it asked one adult respondent in each household a series of questions about experiences and behaviours that indicate food insecurity, such as being unable, at times, to afford balanced meals, cutting the size of meals because of too little money for food, or being hungry because of too little money for food.

The food security status of the household was assigned based on the number of food-insecure conditions reported.

Labels: economic issue, food resoures

From The Hindu

Ela Bhatt, founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association, was presented with the first Global Fairness Initiative Award by United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “for her contribution to India and particularly the women of India, and to the global community.”

Speaking at the awards ceremony held at the Kennedy Center here, Ms. Clinton said Ms. Bhatt had spent nearly every day of the past four decades helping move more than a million poor women in India to a position of dignity and independence.

On her path-breaking work through SEWA, Ms. Clinton said Ms. Bhatt had helped provide women with access to opportunities they did not have before, including a chance to start a business, send their children to school, open their own bank accounts, or simply be treated with respect by their husbands, families and authorities.

Although she had known Ms. Bhatt for 15 years she had heard about Ms. Bhatt even before they met in 1995 when, as First Lady, she travelled to SEWA's Ahmedabad headquarters, Ms. Clinton recalled.

During that visit, she did not know what to expect but was overwhelmed when she was greeted by a “huge group of women, wearing saris that were all the colours of the rainbow,” many of whom were ragpickers who had walked 12-18 hours to get to the meeting.

“We sat together under a sweltering tent and I listened as, one by one, they told me about how SEWA had changed their lives and how they now had a belief in themselves that was absolutely unthinkable before they became involved,” Ms. Clinton said.

Further outlining some of Ms. Bhatt's key contributions to women's rights in India, Ms. Clinton commented on her ideas of investing in women as “one of the most powerful ways to fight poverty,” and the innovative programmes that Ms. Bhatt pioneered, providing the poor with access to services such as credit, banking, sick leave and child care.

SEWA, with a membership of over 1.2 million, works towards “strengthening women's leadership, their confidence, their bargaining power within and outside their homes and their representation on policy-making and decision-making fora,” according to Reema Nanavaty, a director, who was in Washington a few months ago.

Labels: Global Fairness Initiative Award, SEWA, social work

From The Hindu

The United States government is set to announce a plan to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by 2014, a goal that will require the gradual transfer of responsibility for security operations to Afghan forces over the next 18 to 24 months.

Government officials told the New York Times that a “phased four-year plan to wind down American and allied fighting in Afghanistan will be presented at a NATO summit meeting in Lisbon later this week.”

A similar announcement by the Obama administration, to begin a troop drawdown in Afghanistan by July 2011, came in for a barrage of criticism on the grounds that it could strengthen the hand of militants who might regroup after that date.

However the most recent plan, disclosed by unnamed government sources, followed closely on the heels of sharp criticism by Afghan President Hamid Karzai against the U.S.’ military presence in his country.

In an interview with the Washington Post over the weekend Mr. Karzai said “I think ten years is a long time to continue to have military operations. The time has come to reduce military operations. The time has come to reduce the presence of... boots in Afghanistan... to reduce the intrusiveness into the daily Afghan life.”

Describing night raids conducted by U.S. and other foreign troops on Afghan homes as “terrible,” Mr. Karzai lashed out at the U.S. military strategy as well, saying “The Afghan people do not like these raids in any manner. We do not like raids on our homes. This is a problem between us, and I hope this ends as soon as possible.”

General David Petraeus, Commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, was reported to have expressed “astonishment and disappointment,” over Mr. Karzai’s comments, noting that they might make the General’s position “untenable.”

Mr. Karzai’s spokesman, Waheed Omer, however quickly clarified on Monday that Mr. Karzai’s critique was not intended to undermine confidence in General Petraeus, but rather was a sign of a “maturing partnership in which both sides are willing to speak frankly.”

The President’s words notwithstanding, it is the transfer responsibility to the still-developing Afghan security forces that is at the heart of the U.S. According to reports these local forces comprise approximately 264,000 men; and the goal is to raise this number to 350,000 by 2013.

The possibility of a 2014 handover appeared to be a hit with President Barack Obama’s Republican opposition, now holding a stronger hand of cards after a sweeping victory in the House of Representatives earlier this month.

Speaking to ABC's Christiane Amanpour Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said that 2014 was the more realistic date for a drawdown.

“I think in summer of 2011 we can bring some troops home but we are going to need a substantial number of troops in Afghanistan past that,” Senator Graham said, adding that 2014 was the year in which Mr. Karzai had said Afghans would be “in the lead.”

Labels: Afghanistan, combat operations, General David Petraeus, Hamid Karzai, U.S.

From The Hindu

The Obama administration was “keen to see a level playing field,” regarding the civil nuclear agreement with India and there will “definitely” be an announcement on India’s role in Afghanistan and regional counter-terrorism issues, a senior State Department official said hours before the U.S. President embarked on his India visit.

Speaking to The Hindu from Washington the official said that the parties concerned had continued working on the civil nuclear agreement as a “priority” in the aftermath of the passage of the nuclear liability Bill in Parliament.

Responding to a question on whether India could expect any assurances about its future role in Afghanistan, in particular the safety of its workers there, the official said “You will definitely see things highlighted on strategic issues like Afghanistan.”

The official also rejected suggestions that the weakening of Democrats’ control over Congress might alter the course of the U.S.’ India policy, specifically the Obama administration’s anti-outsourcing stance.

Explaining that unlike the parliamentary system a loss of power in one house of the U.S. Congress did not imply a dramatic change, the official added that “there really is a bipartisan consensus on U.S.-India relations.”

When asked whether the Republicans’ willingness to permit outsourcing of jobs would clash with President Obama’s stated preference to keep jobs on U.S. soil the official said that there was “not going to be any significant change” in the official position.

The reason for this was that to create any bill the House of Representatives, the Senate and the President would have to approve and “the President still remains the President” even if he hoped to have the cooperation of Congress.

Besides these two critical issues the State Department expects that during Mr. Obama’s time in India significant announcements will be made in the areas of clean energy, science and technology cooperation, and agricultural cooperation. Education-sector partnerships also “surely will come up in the course of the trip.”

In particular the senior official said to The Hindu that initiatives on agricultural cooperation and science and technology would be taken forward, respectively by Indian-Americans Raj Shah of the USAID aid agency and Anish Chopra, Mr. Obama’s Chief Technology Officer. Mr. Chopra is in India already.

Reinforcing comments by the President this week, the official said that the State Department viewed the India leg of Mr. Obama’s trip as kicking off a four-country visit in Asia, and that was “actually quite important… because what it means is that India is the cornerstone of our approach to our engagement with Asia.”

Labels: AfPak policy, Nuclear liability law, Obama administration