Political India: Engaging America

From The Hindu

It was literally an 11th- hour deal. Shortly after 11pm here United States President Obama, looking tired but happy, took to the podium in the White House to announce that after an entire week of feverish negotiations between Democrats and Republicans a bipartisan deal had been hammered to cut $38 billion from the 2010 baseline budget, thereby averting an automatic shutdown of the federal government.

The constitutionally-mandated shutdown, which was set to occur at midnight eastern standard time, appeared imminent throughout the day, and over 800,000 federal government employees, including U.S. soldiers serving abroad, were preparing to see their paycheques dry up.

With intense discussions underway through the week between Mr. Obama, Speaker of House of Representatives, Republican John Boehner, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the final rounds of negotiation were said to have come down to deeply divisive social issues such as federal government funding of abortion, cuts to mandatory expenditure programmes such as Medicare and Medicaid and financing for environmental programmes aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Earlier in the week Mr. Obama had said that Democrats had been willing to meet Republicans halfway on the actual quantity of budget cuts, in particular arguing that he agreed to a “haircut” of $73 billion from his 2011 budget proposals.

Yet he said at a media briefing that what he did not want were cuts to vital investments in education, innovation and the environment, which would make it possible for the U.S. to emerge safely from the economic downturn and be globally competitive in the future.

Democrats are likely, however, to have compromised on some of their core policy priorities, as the President announced last night, “Some of the cuts we agreed to will be painful. Programmes people rely on will be cut back. Needed infrastructure projects will be delayed. And I would not have made these cuts in better circumstances.”

He was clearly pleased, nevertheless, that the shutdown had been averted, and said, “Behind me, through the window, you can see the Washington Monument, visited each year by hundreds of thousands from around the world... Tomorrow, I am pleased to announce that the Washington Monument, as well as the entire federal government, will be open for business.”

Similar to a tax-cut deal for the middle class that Congress and the White House agreed in January, there was a clamour of bipartisan support for the deal bashed out on Capitol Hill last night.

Mr. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, said that he would expect the final vote on the deal to occur towards the middle of next week, adding, “This has been a long discussion and a long fight, but we fought to keep government spending down because it really will, in fact, help create a better environment for job creators in our country.”

Mr. Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said in a statement to the Senate, “This is historic, what we have done,” touching upon what was described as “the biggest annual spending cut in history.”

The goal of cutting the U.S.’ spiralling budget deficit has principally been driven through Congress by pressure from a new crop of fiscally conservative Tea Party members, who seized control of the House during the mid-term elections last November.

From The Hindu

With less than 12 hours to go before an automatic shutdown of the U.S. federal government occurs, and following a third round of talks with Congressional leaders, President Barack Obama said though Democrats and Republicans were close to hammering out a deal on budget cuts, there were still a few “difficult” outstanding issues.

Reporting on intensive consultations between the White House and the leaders of the House of Representatives and the Senate, Mr. Obama said in their goal to fix the budget deficit level, progress had been made on Thursday and “differences have been narrowed”.

While President Obama argued this week that Democrats were willing to support up to $73 billion in proposed budget cuts, House Speaker John Boehner described some of the Democrats' proposals as “smoke and mirrors”. He implied that Mr. Obama was ducking the issue so far as cuts to mandatory programmes such as Medicare and Medicaid were concerned.

Yet on Thursday evening Mr. Obama warned of the potentially dangerous consequences of a shutdown for the economy, which has barely scraped its way out of the worst downturn witnessed since the 1930s.

Quoting a “top economist,” he said, “The economic damage from a government shutdown would mount very quickly. And the longer it dragged on, the greater the odds of a renewed recession.”

Mr. Obama added that 800,000 federal workers and their families would be impacted by the drying up of paycheques to federal employees and millions of people reliant on government services would not be getting those services.

Yet he also voiced hope that on Friday he may be able to make a statement “that a shutdown has been averted, that a deal has been completed that has very meaningful cuts in a wide variety of categories, that helps us move in the direction of living within our means, but preserves our investments in things like education and innovation, research, that are going to be important for our long-term competitiveness.”

At the heart of the present deadlock is the blockade of Democrats' budget proposals by the Republican-controlled House, an institution whose character has principally been influenced by a vocal section of fiscally conservative Tea Party members since November.

From The Hindu

Indians resident in the United States and holding offshore bank accounts in India and elsewhere via the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) are likely to face questions from the U.S. federal tax authority on whether they have been evading taxes.

In a statement the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said on Thursday that it was seeking an order from a federal court in San Francisco authorising IRS to request information from HSBC Bank USA, about the accounts of such Indian-Americans.

Requesting court permission to issue what is called a “John Doe” summons on HSBC the DoJ said that these orders would help the IRS obtain information about possible tax fraud by people whose identities were as yet unknown. However if approved, the summons would “direct HSBC USA to produce records identifying U.S. taxpayers with accounts at HSBC India, many of whom are believed by the government to have hidden their accounts from the IRS.”

It is possible that HSBC itself may be implicated in any potential lawsuits filed by the U.S. government, particularly as documents filed with the government’s petition, on January 26 2011 suggested that employees of HSBC assured one of their clients, Vaibhav Dahake of Somerset, New Jersey, “that accounts maintained in India would not be reported to the IRS.”

Mr. Dahake was said to already be indicted by a grand jury in Newark, New Jersey, on charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. by using undeclared accounts in the British Virgin Islands and at HSBC India to evade his income taxes.

According to the statement by the U.S. DoJ, in 2002 HSBC India opened a “representative office” at an HSBC USA office in New York City to enable “Non-Resident Indians” (NRIs) living in the U.S. to open accounts in India. “In 2007, HSBC India allegedly opened a second representative office at an HSBC USA office in Fremont, Calif., purportedly “to make banking transactions more convenient for the NRI community based in California,” the DoJ statement added.

While HSBC India reportedly closed those offices in June 2010, the government alleged that NRI clients could still operate their accounts at HSBC India from the U.S.

John DiCicco, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Tax Division, commented on the ongoing case, saying, “The DoJ is committed to ensuring that all U.S. taxpayers meet their obligations to declare and pay taxes on foreign bank accounts... The ability to hide accounts in foreign countries is rapidly dwindling.”

Under U.S. federal law U.S. taxpayers are required to pay federal income taxes on all income earned worldwide. U.S. taxpayers must also report foreign financial accounts if the total value of the accounts exceeds $10,000 at any time during the calendar year, the DoJ said.

From The Hindu

Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi has reached out directly to United States President Barack Obama through a letter in which he described NATO as engaged in an “unjust war against a small people of a developing country” and called on Mr. Obama to “keep NATO off the Libyan affair for good”.

Addressing Mr. Obama as “Our son” and “Excellency,” Mr. Qadhafi said Libya had already been subjected to an arms embargo and sanctions and furthermore it also “suffered a direct military armed aggression during [the former U.S. President, Ronald] Reagan's time.”

Reminding Mr. Obama that democracy and the building of civil society could not be achieved by means of missiles and aircraft, or by backing armed member of Al-Qaeda in the rebel-held city of Benghazi, Mr. Qadhafi said though Libyans had been “hurt more morally [than] physically,” Mr. Obama would still “always remain our son whatever happened”.

Wishing Mr. Obama luck in his 2012 presidential campaign, he said, “We still pray that you continue to be President of the USA. We endeavour and hope that you will gain victory in the new election campaigne [sic]. You are a man who has enough courage to annul a wrong and mistaken action.”

Even as Mr. Qadhafi's letter reached the White House, it became clear that a former U.S. Congressman with Libyan connections, Curt Weldon, had travelled to Tripoli in a private capacity.

State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said in a briefing that Mr. Weldon had not undertaken the trip at the behest of the U.S. government though he had informed the administration before travelling to Libya. Mr. Toner said, “I don't know if it is helpful or unhelpful... He is not representing the U.S. government.”

According to reports, Mr. Weldon had travelled repeatedly to Libya during the last decade, “becoming so close with the Qadhafi regime that the firm Weldon worked for even floated the idea of selling arms to Tripoli.” CNN reported that Mr. Weldon had returned to Libya at this time “to try to help negotiate a political settlement with Qadhafi and family”.

In an article, the New York Times said Mr. Weldon had travelled to Libya at the invitation of Mr. Qadhafi's chief of staff, and said his purpose was “to meet with Col. Qadhafi today and persuade him to step aside”.

From The Hindu

India took another step towards quality parity with international standards in the realm of non-clinical chemicals manufacturing when it joined the system for the Mutual Acceptance of Data (MAD) in the Assessment of Chemicals, a multilateral agreement supported by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Its decision to join the OECD pact this week makes India the third key emerging economy to get on board the platform for ensuring that the results of its non-clinical chemical safety testing will be accepted in all other participating countries, the OECD said in a statement.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría said: “India's engagement in OECD's work on chemical safety and its membership in our MAD system is indicative of the mutual benefit of the ever-closer relationship between OECD and major emerging economies.”

He said the MAD system saved governments and chemical producers around €150 million every year by allowing the results of a variety of non-clinical safety tests done on chemicals and chemical products, such as industrial chemicals and pesticides, to be shared across OECD and other countries that adhere to the system. Under the system it would be mandatory for testing to be carried out using OECD standards for test methods and for data quality and governments would have to verify compliance of laboratories by using the OECD-agreed procedures. These procedures would now apply to India, as they do to all OECD countries and also emerging markets in South Africa and Singapore.

In most cases the rules for testing and quality have been implemented via the appropriate legislative and administrative procedures, the OECD said, highlighting the benefits that would arise from the MAD system through the removal of a potential non-tariff trade barrier between countries for marketing chemicals.

Ensuring that OECD and partner countries share and trust each other's chemical safety test data would also open the possibility for producers in OECD countries to have safety tests for their chemicals undertaken in adhering partner economies, officials said, noting that “provisional adherents to the MAD system are currently Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia and Thailand.”

From The Hindu

Brandon Rhode (31) was not in good shape when he was strapped into the execution chamber gurney on September 27 2010, in Georgia, United States. Six days earlier he had attempted suicide because, according to court documents, he did not want to be “put down like a dog.” As a result, he was left with “deep gaping wounds” from the razor he used to slash his neck and elbows. He was also said to have been brain-damaged from sheer blood loss.

Unfortunately for Rhode, convicted in 2000 of killing three persons during a burglary attempt, the worst was yet to come. For although medics spent 30 minutes trying to find a vein in Rhode's arm, into which they could insert needles to administer lethal drugs, something was clearly going wrong when the drugs started pumping. The first drug injected into Rhode, sodium thiopental, was supposed to render him unconscious, yet Rhode's eyes remained open throughout the procedure and moments before he was pronounced dead he was said to have turned his head and exposed the bandage over his slashed neck.

In a sworn declaration Mark Heath, a medical doctor and an expert witness in lethal injection cases, said: “Given the highly unusual provenance of the thiopental that was used in the Rhode execution, one explanation for the eyes remaining open is that the thiopental lacked efficiency.”

The “unusual provenance” that Dr. Heath mentioned in his report was a reference to the fact that the Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC) had imported the thiopental from Dream Pharma, a company located in the United Kingdom, “which operates out of the back of a driving school in London,” according to Dr. Heath.

Why did a key death penalty State of the U.S., itself a country steeped in a long and contentious history of capital punishment, have to resort to importing a lethal injection drug? A little bit of background is in order here, especially because since January execution drugs have entered the U.S. from yet another “unusual provenance” — Kayem Pharma Company of Mumbai, India.

While the history of the lethal injection goes back to May 1977, when the Oklahoma legislature first adopted it as a statute-supported method of execution, today 37 of the 38 death penalty States have lethal injection statutes. However, the entire execution “industry” in the U.S. relied on only one company for the supply of the lethal drugs cocktail — a firm called Hospira located in Lake Forest, Illinois. Emails, obtained by The Hindu, between Hospira and the Nebraska DOC, importer of thiopental from Kayem Pharma, made it clear that Hospira “do not support the use of any of our products in capital punishment procedures.”

Matters took a turn for the worse for States such as Nebraska when Hospira announced in the summer of 2010 that it had temporarily ceased production of thiopental due to a “shortage of raw materials.” Yet, according to Clive Stafford Smith, Director of a U.K.-based anti-death-penalty campaign group called Reprieve, the reason for the stoppage was that Hospira's plant was old and re-tooling it would be uneconomical given that thiopental is now off-patent.

Italy's stance

When Hospira sought to supply thiopental from a plant it owned in Italy, Reprieve campaigners worked with the Italian government, which was said to have been “shocked that Italy might be involved in the execution business,” and eventually “suggested to Hospira Italy that if they exported any drugs used for executions they might end up losing their export licence altogether.” At this point, according to Mr. Smith, Hospira made the “sensible decision” to cease production of the drugs altogether.

With the supplies of thiopental dwindling rapidly around the U.S., death penalty States saw themselves faced with two options. First, some of them, such as Ohio, Arizona, Oklahoma and Texas, switched to another anaesthetic, pentobarbital, commonly used for euthanising animals, and whose effects on human beings for execution purposes has never been tested.

States such as Ohio and Oklahoma have already executed four prisoners using pentobarbital, despite anaesthesia specialists such as David Waisel of Harvard Medical School warning that “the use of pentobarbital as an agent to induce anaesthesia has no clinical history... [and] puts the inmate at risk for serious undue pain and suffering.”

Act of desperation

In what might well have been an act of desperation, State executioners then decided to start importing thiopental, in the first instance from Dream Pharma in the U.K. Scarcely imagining the enormity of the legal backlash that would ensue, Arizona led the way, quickly executing Jeffrey Landrigan on October 25 2010 using the British thiopental. Georgia followed suit, executing Emmanuel Hammond on January 25 2011, having already executed Rhode.

The instant it was revealed in the British media that a home-grown company was supplying lethal drugs for U.S. executions, there was a flurry of public and legal campaigns mostly targeting two Liberal Democrats, Business Secretary Vince Cable and Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister of State Jeremy Browne.

They initially declined to intervene; however they reversed that decision, reportedly after seeing evidence that the drug was only being exported for use on death row. Mr. Cable said: “In light of new information I have taken the decision to control the export of sodium thiopental. This move underlines this government's and my own personal moral opposition to the death penalty in all circumstances without impacting legitimate trade.”

The Kayem deal

Enter Nebraska DOC's transactions with Kayem Pharmaceuticals Private Limited, a small generic drug manufacturer based out of Marian Colony in Borivali, Mumbai. A series of emails, which The Hindu has in its possession, began between a representative of the Nebraska DOC and a Kayem sales representative in November 2010, the subject of discussion being the export of 500 one-gram vials of thiopental, valued at $2,056.15, from Mumbai to Nebraska.

The deal appeared to be progressing smoothly until the shipment reached Omaha around mid-December. A hold-up occurred at that point owing to the FDA's lack of clarity on whether or not the Nebraska DOC had a sufficient legal basis for importing the lethal drug. The FDA finally relented on January 7, 2011, making what informed observers described as a “political decision to not review the importation of the drugs.” It, however, clarified its position to the Nebraska DOC, saying: “In keeping with established practice, FDA does not review or approve products for the purpose of lethal injection. FDA has not reviewed the products in this shipment to determine their identity, safety, effectiveness, purity or any other characteristics.”

Yet with this action the FDA has risked unleashing an execution-frenzy among thiopental-starved death penalty States.

Already a likely victim of Indian-made thiopental has been identified — Carey Dean Moore (53). He awaits execution in the Nebraska DOC, now the owner of enough Kayem-manufactured thiopental to execute 166 men.

With the U.S.' patchy record of untested anaesthetics that fail to produce the expected unconsciousness, Moore may also expect the same outcome as Rhode, which Dr. Heath described thus: “There is no dispute that the asphyxiation caused by pancuronium [the second, paralytic agent administered] and the caustic burning sensation caused by potassium chloride [the third, heart-stopping agent administered] would be agonising in the absence of adequate anaesthesia.”

Unless last week's seizures of Kentucky's and Tennessee's stocks of imported thiopental by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency are repeated in other States and the proliferation of these untested drugs eventually stopped, we could enter a new era of “cruel and unusual punishment” for death row inmates across the country. Already, it is possible that the dubious Indian barbiturate has found its way into the broader healthcare system and reached the DOCs of several States.

India's options

And for India, itself a user of capital punishment, although in the “rarest of rare” cases, it is anybody's guess as to whether authorities will follow the stellar example of the U.K. and Italy and ban the export of lethal drugs to the U.S. Perhaps in a stroke of irony it will be economics rather than morality that will stall the entry of Indian generic drug manufacturers into this bloodthirsty niche of global commerce.

According to Reprieve's Mr. Smith, “Kayem can expect to be party to U.S. litigation for decades. It may have made them a small profit at the start, but they will end up paying lawyers until their profits have vanished one hundred times.”

Indeed, even as Reprieve held a press conference in Mumbai this week to raise awareness of the issue in the country, Kayem announced: “In view of the sensitivity involved with sale of our Thiopental Sodium to various... prisons in USA and as alleged to be used for the purpose of lethal injection, we voluntary declare that we... refrain ourselves in selling this drug where the purpose is purely for lethal injection and its misuse.”

However, if the lethal drugs export persists, even as India clamours for a more prominent place on the world stage, it will have to hide the embarrassing fact that it tacitly condones its merchants of death.

From The Hindu

When there is an urgent need for more financial assistance to mitigate a widely prevalent health issue in a developing country, fundraising efforts in all corners of the globe can play a vital role.

This is what a group of multi-talented Indian dancers in the United States proved this week when they held a dance programme at the Siva Vishnu Temple in Lanham, Maryland, to benefit the cause of the Tamil Nadu Kidney Research (TANKER) Foundation in India.

Organised by Yamini Saripalli, a Kuchipudi dancer and disciple of gurus Vempati Chinna Satyam and Vempati Ravi Shankar, the event featured a rainbow of artistes across dance styles, including Kuchipudi, Bharata Natyam, and Odissi.

Speaking to The Hindu Dr. Saripalli, also a dermatologist working in the Washington area, said that the TANKER Foundation, headed by Dr. Georgi Abraham in Chennai, had helped subsidise dialysis, medication and kidney transplant costs for underprivileged individuals with kidney failure.

The Foundation, one of whose goodwill ambassadors is the actor Surya, has supported over 71,000 dialysis procedures and helped treat 613 patients. Further, the Foundation has distributed close to Rs.59.59 lakhs among 1013 patients as one time contributions ranging from Rs. 5000 to Rs. 50,000, towards dialysis, transplantation and medication costs.

From a small beginning in the early 1990s, the institution has come a long way towards improving the welfare of poorer individuals affected by kidney-related ailments and today there are 140 patients having regular dialysis at TANKER. Additionally 161 awareness camps about kidney disease have also been conducted.

At fundraising cultural event in the pristine surroundings of the popular Siva Vishnu Temple, the dancers enthralled the audience with the sheer technical mastery of their respective styles.

Dr. Saripalli along with Subha Maruvada and Chitra Kalyandurg performed in the Kuchipudi style; Bharata Natyam artistes included Anita Sivaraman, Sivakami Bhavanandan, Anuradha Murali, Aparna Seetharaman, Subathra Sudarshan and Krishna Kumar Venkataraman; and the Odissi dancers were Mishka Shreya Mukherji, Uttara Nag, Neeraja Balachander, Aditi Kolhekar and Kosha Perkh.

From The Hindu

The use of terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba by Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence came in for a lambasting at the House of Representatives during a hearing yesterday on foreign policy priorities and needs amidst economic challenges in South Asia.

In a well-attended hearing at the Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill, members of Congress pressed top Obama administration officials on the core question of why, after $20 billion had been pumped into Pakistan over the last decade and over a billion dollars had been supplied under the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill, anti-American sentiment in Pakistan was still so strong.

Putting it bluntly, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Steve Chabot, Republican of Ohio, said, “The question is basically we spent all this money and they still hate us. What should we do about that?”

Congressman Chabot also added that despite efforts “The fact remains that Pakistani and U.S. strategic interests diverge on certain issues – especially those concerning Islamist terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, which the Pakistani ISI continues to view as a strategic asset vis-a-vis India.”

Mr. Chabot also said that “years of Pakistani mistrust of the U.S. has resulted in a relationship in which cooperation on certain issues is often accompanied by obstruction on others,” adding that the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009 was supposed to convey to Pakistan that the U.S. interest is in a strategic partnership and not just a transactional relationship.

Congressman Gary Ackerman, Democrat of New York, said in a similar vein that the U.S. itself had “failed India” in that it had not used its diplomatic leadership and agenda-setting capability to “focus global attention to the threat to India from Pakistan-based terrorists, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, that continue to raise money from all over the world.”

Contrarily Mr. Ackerman said that the U.S.’ relations with India were still too narrow and shallow, and “Some of the responsibility is ours, some is theirs.” In particular Congressman Ackerman noted that on the economic side “There is still too much opportunity being lost to outdated rules, regulations and laws limiting the attractiveness and accessibility of India as a destination for business and investment.”

Responding to some of the questions from the panel Robert Blake, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, highlighted the State Department’s optimism regarding the recent resumption of talks between India and Pakistan and the demonstration of good will by both sides.

He had positive words especially for the fact that “Both countries made important strides during the home secretary talks last week by agreeing to set up a hotline between their two governments to share information about the threats of terrorism and to share and facilitate the work of commissions investigating terrorist attacks.”

Mr. Blake also underscored the growing importance of trade and investment in boosting the bilateral relationship, explaining that during President Barack Obama’s visit to India last November, trade deals in excess of $14.9 billion in total value were announced, “with $9.5 billion in U.S. export content supporting almost 54,000 jobs.”

Contrary to some recent statements emanating from Congress regarding U.S. jobs lost to outsourcing by Indian companies, Mr. Blake noted that India was also “among the fastest-growing sources of investment into the U.S.” and in the last decade, investment capital coming from India to the U.S. grew at an annualised rate of 53 per cent, touching $4.4 billion in 2009.

“The strategic partnership with India will remain among our top foreign policy priorities,” Mr. Blake said.

From The Hindu

The United States federal government is in danger of being shut down by the end of this week unless a disagreement between Democrats and Republicans on the level of budget cuts is resolved by then.

Speaking to media here U.S. President Barack Obama lashed out at the House of Representatives’ Republican leadership for refusing to meet him halfway on cuts worth $33 billion that the Democrats believed they could support.

Arguing that the true level of cuts that the Democrats had now agreed was actually $73 billion, Mr. Obama said, “Speaker Boehner[’s]... original budget proposed $73 billion in cuts. We have now agreed to $73 billion worth of cuts. What they are now saying is, well, we are not sure that every single one of the cuts that you have made are ones that we agree to; we would rather have these cuts rather than that cut. That is not the basis for shutting down the government.”

If the shutdown occurs, as it last did when Democratic President Bill Clinton clashed with a Republican-controlled Congress in the mid-1990s, it would imply that payments to military veterans, passport applications, visits to national parks and monuments and loans to small businesses would be massively disrupted. The Pentagon and emergency services would remain unaffected, according to sources.

Addressing Mr. Obama’s unwillingness to take on board a budget proposing radical cuts worth $5.8 trillion over 10 years, Mr. Boehner said, “I am disappointed but not surprised that the White House has chosen to attack Chairman [of the House Budget Committee, Paul] Ryan’s budget proposal... Instead, he presented Congress with a budget that punts on the drivers of our debt while raising taxes by $1.5 trillion, a sure-fire recipe for destroying jobs in America.”

According to experts in the Heritage Foundation think tank, who briefed The Hindu last week, Republicans are keen to get cuts in some of the mandatory spending programmes such as Medicare and Medicaid, whereas Democrats have thus far only offered cuts in discretionary spending.

However President Obama defended his party’s approach and said that he would not budge on his refusal to cut into programmes such as Head Start, a policy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that provides comprehensive education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and their families.

Mr. Obama also reiterated his intention to hold meetings with Mr. Boehner, Mr. Ryan and others throughout this week to arrive at a solution. Yet, he said, the one option that he was against entirely was for Congress and the White House to yet again pass a short-term extension of the spending limit.

He said, “We did it once for two weeks, then we did another one for three weeks. That is not a way to run a government. I can’t have our agencies making plans based on two-week budgets. I can’t have the Defence Department, I can’t have the State Department, I can’t have our various agencies on food safety and making sure our water is clean and making sure that our airports are functioning, I can’t have them making decisions based on two-week-at-a-time budgets.”

From The Hindu

Using a video posted on the YouTube website (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-VZLvVF1FQ) United States President Barack Obama informally kicked off what appears to be another grassroots campaign for his 2012 re-election bid.

In a move that likely presages a campaign that will intensively use social media, Mr. Obama also reached out to Americans through Twitter and e-mail, where he said: “Today, we are filing papers to launch our 2012 campaign. We are doing this now because the politics we believe in does not start with expensive TV ads or extravaganzas, but with you — with people organizing block-by-block, talking to neighbours, co-workers, and friends.”

Mr. Obama said in his message that even though he was “focused on the job you elected me to do, and the race may not reach full speed for a year or more”, the work of laying the foundation for his campaign “must start today”.

The announcement of the re-election bid, though widely expected, comes at a time when the Republican leadership is relatively fragmented and, according to some pollsters, is yet to throw up a candidate who could mount a serious challenge to Mr. Obama's campaign in 2012.

According to a poll by Gallup late last month, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich were “bunched in the top tier while another dozen or so possibilities bring up the rear”.

Similarly, a survey by the Pew Research Center in March also indicated “a fairly tight cluster”, with Mr. Romney at 21 per cent, Mr. Huckabee at 20 per cent, Ms. Palin at 13 per cent and Mr. Gingrich 11 per cent.

Mr. Obama's job approval ratings, which hit an all-time low last year, ticked up to above 50 per cent following his January deal-making with Republicans on extending tax cuts for the American middle class.

While some polls such as Rasmussen placed the proportion of people who “somewhat approved” of his performance down at 45 per cent in March, observers noted that the steady improvement in job market conditions for the last four months is likely to buoy Mr. Obama's prospects if it persists. In the month of March the economy added 216,000 jobs and the unemployment rate dropped to 8.8 per cent.

From The Hindu

Revelations in The Hindu on the Dow Chemical Company — acquirer of Union Carbide (UC), associated with the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984 — are consistent with the lack of response from the Government of India thus far, despite numerous information requests, according to Somasundaram Kumaresamuthusamy of the Association for India's Development (AID), an NGO.

Commenting on the report “Sops for Chemicals?” (The Hindu, April 1) relating to the India cables from WikiLeaks, Mr. Kumaresamuthusamy said that since June 2010 he had been pursuing the Indian embassy in Washington to revert to him regarding a second Right to Information application that he filed.

In that application, he sought a copy of all communication between the Ministry of External affairs and the Indian embassy on the Bhopal tragedy starting 1984 to date. The Hindu is in possession of all the emails between him and the Indian embassy.

Mr. Kumaresamuthusamy also requested, in the RTI application, further clarity on whether there was a request from the Government of India to the U.S. government for extradition of UC head Warren Anderson and if yes, what the U.S. government's response was.

Despite numerous follow-up emails and requests for action, two months passed before Mr. Kumaresamuthusamy received the following response from the Indian embassy. “The matter raised in your RTI application is sub judice. Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India has received similar RTI applications, which are presently being examined by the Ministry. Any additional response would be based on outcome of that examination.”

As per emails shared with The Hindu, it was evident that Mr. Kumaresamuthusamy then attempted to appeal the decision by the MEA not to share further details on the extradition of Mr. Anderson and other interactions between the Government of India and Dow Chemical officials.

In particular, he also quoted to embassy officials an order passed, in September 2010, by Information Commissioner Annapurna Dixit of the Central Information Commission, directing the MEA to “provide information” on the issue whether safe passage was promised to Mr. Anderson.

Yet the only response Mr. Kumaresamuthusamy got from the embassy was a statement that said: “This is to inform you that the reply that the Embassy had sent you vide email dated August 19, 2010 was based on the advice of the Ministry of External Affairs. Any further response from the Embassy would also be based on the Ministry's instructions.”

“Shows the clout”

Commenting on the lack of substantive response from the MEA to his RTI application, Mr. Kumaresamuthusamy said: “I see this as a pattern of stone-walling information by government officials regarding Dow investments and action against them to the citizens while having a free-flowing communication with Dow Chemicals. The Dow CEO's conversation with [Vilasrao] Deshmukh [reported in The Hindu expose published last Friday] shows how much clout this company has in our political structure.”

From The Hindu

Marking a continuing improvement in job market conditions in the United States, the economy added 216,000 jobs in March, according to the monthly report of the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics.

The news would cheer the Obama administration, for which job creation is likely to be the top priority for the remainder of this year.

Reacting to the report Austan Goolsby, Chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, said, “Today’s employment report shows that private sector payrolls increased by 230,000 in March, marking 13 consecutive months of private employment growth. Private sector employers added 1.8 million jobs over that period, including more than half a million jobs in the last three months.”

While expressing optimism that the unemployment rate had fallen for the fourth straight month to 8.8 per cent, he cautioned that, “as long as millions of people are looking for jobs, there is still considerable work to do to replace the jobs lost in the downturn.”

Mr. Goolsby also lauded specific stimulus policies of the administration for boosting jobs, arguing, “We are seeing signs that the initiatives put in place by this Administration – such as the payroll tax cut and business incentives for investment – are creating the conditions for sustained growth and job creation.”

According to economists, while a sustained improvement in the job market would benefit Mr. Obama’s prospects of re-election in 2012, most estimates, even those of the White House, do not place the unemployment rate at anything below eight per cent until 2013.

Mr. Goolsby also warned that while the overall trajectory of the economy had “improved dramatically over the past two years,” there would “surely be bumps in the road ahead.”

From The Hindu

The United States had no intention to send its ground forces into Libya; however, it remained noncommittal about the extent of involvement of CIA in Libyan operations, it was revealed to Congress this week.

Testifying before the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates said that as long as he was on the job there would not be any plan for U.S. soldiers to enter Libya.

However Mr. Gates refused to spell out details of the CIA's activities, following reports on Thursday that the U.S. spy agency was already on Libyan soil.
Limited role

Reiterating the oft-stated U.S. claim that involvement would be “limited,” he added that the new mission in Libya, codenamed “Operation Unified Protector,” was under to an integrated NATO command and the U.S. military would only provide “the capabilities that others cannot provide either in kind or in scale,” including electronic warfare, aerial refuelling, lift, search and rescue, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support.

Mr. Gates in his Congressional testimony said, “Accordingly, we will, in coming days, significantly ramp down our commitment of other military capabilities and resources,”.

He added that deposing the Qadhafi regime would likely be achieved “over time through political and economic measures and by his own people.”

Earlier this week reports, quoting unnamed government officials, surfaced in U.S. media “small groups of C.I.A. operatives have been working in Libya for several weeks as part of a shadow force of Westerners that the Obama administration hopes can help bleed Colonel Qadhafi's military.”

From The Hindu

Major Indian IT companies again found themselves in the crosshairs of Congressional ire in the United States this week, as witnesses testifying in a House of Representatives hearing on immigration policy enforcement lambasted the use of the H1-B visa as a convenient route for outsourcing American jobs to India.

Speaking before the House Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement, Ronil Hira, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, said, “For at least the past five years, nearly all of the employers receiving the most H-1B are using them to offshore tens of thousands of high-wage, high-skilled American jobs.”

Mr. Hira added that the offshore outsourcing industry was adding “hundreds of thousands of jobs every year,” and the top three India-based offshore outsourcing firms — Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and Wipro — added a “stunning” 57,000 net new employees last year alone.

In his testimony to the Subcommittee headed by Congressman Lamar Smith, Repubican of Texas, Mr. Hira further argued that, “If the H-1B programme loopholes were closed, many of those jobs would have gone to Americans.”

The latest debate revives the spectre of a strong anti-outsourcing sentiment in the U.S. that saw, during the worst of the economic downturn last year, laws passed making it more expensive for Indian companies to obtain visas for their U.S.-based employees.

That bill, which drew upon support from Senator Charles Schumer, caused significant consternation in Indian corporate houses that were seeking to expand their U.S. operations.

However, since President Barack Obama’s visit to India in November, bilateral commercial transactions were again viewed in a positive light, with the President himself mentioning the job-creating benefits of U.S. economic engagement with India.

Yet in Thursday’s hearing in the House, Mr. Hira presented evidence showing that for the fiscal years 2007 to 2009, seven of the top ten H-1B employers were “doing significant offshoring,” and such offshoring through the H-1B programme was “so common that it has been dubbed the “outsourcing visa” by India’s former commerce minister.”

According to the statistics Mr. Hira supplied, Infosys, Satyam and Wipro jointly obtained over 30,000 H1-B visas during the period and other “significant offshoring” companies including Tata, Cognizant, IBM and Accenture jointly obtained nearly 7,000 visas.

Insufficient safeguards?

Setting the tone for the hearings in his remarks, Congressman Smith said, “The H-1B program has safeguards built into it to protect the interests of American workers. It is a subject of great dispute as to whether those safeguards are sufficient.”

Mr. Smith went on to argue that the U.S. Government Accountability Office recently found that H-1B employers categorise over half of their H-1B workers as entry level — which is defined as “perform[ing] routine tasks that require limited, if any exercise of judgment” — and only six per cent as fully competent.

“Are all these entry level workers really the best and brightest,” Mr. Smith asked.

From The Hindu

India-based companies with United States operations actually saved, through their acquisition of U.S. firms, 2,585 jobs from being eliminated during the global economic downturn, a new survey by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has found. Further, the survey suggested that 35 top Indian companies in the U.S. employ over 60,000 people across 40 states and over 80 per cent of these are local hires.

Unveiling the insightful and wide-ranging survey, Indian Roots, American Soil, at a star-studded event at the U.S. Capitol Building on Wednesday, Indian Ambassador to the U.S., Meera Shankar said, “Indian businesses have cooperated with U.S. companies in developing globally relevant products, processes and technology solutions.”

Ms. Shankar noted that these companies, which span a diverse range of sectors from services to manufacturing, had not only generated and sustained thousands of direct and indirect jobs in the U.S., but had also “contributed to the global competitiveness of U.S. companies.”

The survey’s results show progress made even since U.S. President Barack Obama’s November 2010 visit to India, which saw the inking of trade and commercial deals exceeding $14.9 billion in value with $9.5 billion in U.S. exports leading to the creation of an estimated 53,670 U.S. jobs.

Some of the results are likely to dispel concerns expressed by Senators last year about U.S. jobs being lost through outsourcing to countries such as India — in particular, the evidence showing the number of jobs saved and created on U.S. soil. Expressing optimism about the future of the bilateral relationship Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and co-Chair of the Senate India Caucus said, “The relationship between the U.S. — the world’s oldest democracy — and India — the largest democracy — has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years.”

Senator Cornyn further said that trade in goods and services between the two countries had grown “exponentially”, and created economic opportunities in both nations.

Kiran Pasricha, Deputy Director General of CII underscored the fresh perspective that the survey results provided on Indian companies in the U.S. She said, “This is CII’s first major attempt in bringing together Indian companies with operations in the U.S. as a group, to interact with members of the U.S. Congress.”

Ms. Pasricha also said to The Hindu that Congressional leaders were increasingly becoming aware of Indian companies’ footprints in their own districts, and this awareness would help further improve the prospects for Indian companies that sought to make investments in U.S. states in the future.

Among the major companies involved in the event on Capitol Hill this week were Bharat Forge, Essar Americas, Export-Import Bank of India, HCL America, Infotech Enterprises, Infosys, Larsen and Toubro Ltd., Larsen and Toubro Infotech, Larsen and Toubro Hydrocarbons IC, Mahindra Satyam, Mahindra USA, Mindtree, Polaris, Ranbaxy, State Bank of India, Tata Communications, Tata Consultancy Services, Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces, Tata Sons, Welspun, Wipro, Wockhardt, and Zee TV.

From The Hindu

A top analyst in Washington has described India’s possible abandonment of its “strategic restraint,” or reticence to use force as an instrument of policy, as potentially “revolutionary.”

However he has argued that the doctrine’s roots are too strong and India’s “survival despite failures, including against China and Pakistan, suggest that it will endure.”

In a recent paper entitled, Is India Ending its Strategic Restraint Doctrine? Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution in Washington, along with Sunil Dasgupta of the University of Maryland, noted that India has shown strategic restraint historically towards aggressive neighbours such as Pakistan and China.

In this light, they argue, “Linear projections of current trends do not predict India abandoning its strategic restraint; for that, it will require a major and unforeseeable disruption at home or abroad.”

The authors suggest that while a strategically and militarily assertive India could be “revolutionary,” perhaps even end India’s 60-year strategic equivalence with Pakistan and precipitate a more competitive relationship with China, it is unlikely to abandon strategic restraint with each of its neighbours for specific reasons.

Regarding China, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Dasgupta suggest that the India-China bilateral relationship has been as cooperative as it has been conflicting, and a number of Indians “including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,” who would prefer to avoid an expensive arms race with China that will detract India from its primary task of economic development.

In the context of Pakistan, the paper leans more towards the case for India abandoning strategic restraint, arguing, “The potential of a failed Pakistan would have horrendous consequences, and India seeks to be strategically active in limiting the fallout of a collapse.”

Yet, they note, India has not moved to abandon strategic restraint and “develop the institutional capacity to deal with such an eventuality.”

From The Hindu

Intelligence suggests that some opposition forces in Libya that have been receiving support from Western powers and now NATO may have “flickers” of Al-Qaeda influence, according to James Stavridis, United States Admiral and Commander of NATO forces.

In comments made at a U.S. Senate hearing on Tuesday, Admiral Stavridis also hinted that the rebels might have links to Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based group.

“The intelligence that I am receiving at this point makes me feel that the leadership that I'm seeing are responsible men and women who are struggling against Colonel Qadhafi... We have seen flickers in the intelligence of potential Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah.”

He said, “But at this point, I do not have the detail sufficient to say that there is a significant Al-Qaeda presence or any other terrorist presence in and among these folks.”

However NATO was examining very closely the content, composition, the personalities and who the leaders of the opposition forces were.

His comments came even as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attended a conference on the Libyan situation in London, with the arming of the rebels being a key question addressed.

Top U.S. officials including Ms. Clinton have repeatedly said under the Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorised the imposition and enforcement of the no-fly zone in Libya, UNSC members did have the option to arm rebels despite an overall arms embargo for the country.

However Admiral Stavridis' comments are likely to add another layer of complexity to such a process.

From The Hindu

In a speech that was long on grand sentiment and short on strategic detail, United States President Barack Obama laid out the justification for the U.S.’ military intervention in Libya, at the National Defense University here.

Speaking to an audience of top military brass but addressing his remarks to the American people, Mr. Obama cast Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi as a murderous "tyrant" who targeted innocents, saying, "There is no question that Libya — and the world — would be better off with Qadhafi out of power..."

Mr. Obama also reiterated the message that he was abiding by his promise that in the Libyan engagement "America’s role would be limited; that we would not put ground troops into Libya; that we would focus our unique capabilities on the front end of the operation and that we would transfer responsibility to our allies and partners."

However, he did not spell out how long the present phase of the operations would last, the date on which all U.S. troops not a part of NATO would withdraw, and how exactly he visualised balance of power between Qadhafi and the rebel groups in Libya evolving.

Striking a defensive note, the President said the U.S. had intervened in Libya because - "We had a unique ability to stop that violence: an international mandate for action, a broad coalition prepared to join us, the support of Arab countries, and a plea for help from the Libyan people themselves."

Yet in doing so, he made no mention of the fact that numerous nations including India, and the United Nations Security Council members China and Russia, had abstained from voting through the resolution mandating action by Western powers on Libyan soil.

From The Hindu

In media interviews over the weekend, United States Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have hinted at uncertainty over the duration of Western nations’ involvement in the Libyan conflict.

When asked in an interview with CBS whether a lengthy military involvement implied the U.S. was again embarking on a regime-change project, Ms. Clinton said: “If we have learned anything over the past number of years, regime change is very complicated and can be very expensive and can take a long time. And so I think the key here was establishing a military mission that was achievable... on a limited period of time and it could be sustained.”

Yet, in the same interview, in response to a question on Pentagon reports that the no-fly zone imposed over Libyan airspace under a United Nations resolution would last three months or more, Mr. Gates said: “I don't think anybody has any idea.”

Ms. Clinton suggested there was also continuing uncertainty on whether the Western alliance would arm the rebels fighting Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi’s forces. Ms. Clinton said there had been no such decision, however, the U.S. was “in contact with the rebels” and she had met with one of the leaders.

However, Ms. Clinton added that should it be deemed necessary to arm the rebels, there was legal basis to do so under the U.N. mandate, because, “There is an arms embargo against the Qadhafi regime that was established in ... Resolution 1970, which applied to the entire country. In the follow-on resolution, 1973, there is an exception if countries or organisations were to choose to use that.”

From The Hindu

Days after his conservative government was ousted in a vote of no-confidence passed in the Canadian Parliament, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that elections would be held on May 2 this year.

Mr. Harper’s opposition, comprising the Liberals, New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois parties, passed a no-confidence motion by a vote of 156-145 last Friday, following which the legislature was dissolved.

With these developments, Canada will soon face its fourth election in seven years, most of which have resulted in minority governments ruling the country. However, recent polls suggest that this time the Conservatives, led by Mr. Harper, might succeed in garnering a majority, or in any case, would come out ahead of the Liberal party.

Following his government’s ouster, Mr. Harper was reported to have said that the Liberals had a “hidden agenda” to form a coalition if voters did not elect a stable national government, which, he said, only the Conservatives could form.

The Wall Street Journal quoted Mr. Harper as saying it was “crazy” to risk having an “unprincipled” coalition government with a party that wants to break up the country, a reference to Bloc Quebecois, which was said to want secession for the province of Quebec.

However, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff dismissed Mr. Harper’s claims about opportunistic coalition politics by the opposition, in particular, arguing that he would not work with the Bloc Quebecois.

“We will not enter a coalition with other federalist parties,” Mr. Ignatieff said in a statement, adding, “Issue-by-issue collaboration with other parties is the best way for minority Parliaments to function.” He also pointed out that coalitions were a “legitimate constitutional option”.

Mr. Harper, who has headed two successive minority governments since 2006, is credited with sound macroeconomic management of the economy that saw Canada emerge from the global economic crisis relatively unscathed.

Social media election

In an unusual development, observers noted that the upcoming election might well be Canada’s first “social media election” entailing the use of micro-blogging site Twitter and other social media websites.

According to reports, “The defeat of the Conservative government unleashed a torrent of political tweets,” and by mid-afternoon on Sunday, more than 14,000 tweets related to the campaign, the election or Canadian politics had been sent out.

From The Hindu

The United States is “worried” about the prospect of a terror attack in India “right now,” according to Robert Blake, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, in particular from groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba.

In a recent interview in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Mr. Blake said, “We think that groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba are looking for opportunities and countries through which they can infiltrate into India.”

Touching upon counter-terrorism coordination between key South Asian nations, Mr. Blake added that from the U.S.' perspective, the bilateral cooperation between countries has been “pretty good, with the possible exception of Pakistan.”

High priority

Arguing that such coordination, however, was “a very high priority for India and for Pakistan,” the Assistant Secretary said that the U.S. was very encouraged that the two nations' Home Ministers were going to meet on March 28.

“We hope that that can get counter-terrorism cooperation back on a more solid footing,” Mr. Blake said.

From The Hindu

Even as confusion surrounded the legality of the western alliance arming rebel groups in Libya, United States President Barack Obama on Saturday said the military operation Odyssey Dawn was “succeeding”.

According to observers here, the “Obama administration believes the United Nations resolution that authorised international intervention in Libya has the “flexibility” to [arm the rebels]”.

In particular, U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N. Susan Rice is reported to have said the language of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 authorising action in Libya was “not specific”.

While Jose Filipe Moraes Cabral, head of the UNSC's Libya Sanctions Committee, admitted the wording of the UNSCR 1973 was “open to a lot of interpretation”, he was reported to have said he would not interpret the wording as allowing arms shipments to the rebels.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said this week if arming the rebels was “the right way to go”, then that option would certainly be a “possibility”.

Arms embargo

However, in United Kingdom, Prime Minister David Cameron said: “I think I am right in saying that the resolution is clear... There is an arms embargo, and that arms embargo has to be enforced across Libya.” He added that legal advice suggesting this stricture applied only to the Qadhafi regime “is not in fact correct”.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama, in his weekly televised address, said: “We are succeeding in our mission. We have taken out Libya's air defences. Qadhafi's forces are no longer advancing across Libya.”

However, similar to other statements emanating from the White House and State Department, Mr. Obama persisted with the emphasis on the limited nature of the U.S. engagement in Libyan mission and the likely reduction in the number of U.S. troops involved going forward.

Mr. Obama said, “As I pledged at the outset, the role of American forces has been limited. We are not putting any ground forces into Libya. Our military has provided unique capabilities at the beginning, but this is now a broad, international effort.”

From The Hindu

Command and control of military operations in Libya, in particular, the enforcement of the no-fly zone imposed under a United Nations Security Council resolution, will transfer to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Thursday.

In a statement Mr. Rasmussen said, “We are taking action as part of the broad international effort to protect civilians against the attacks by the [Muammar] Qadhafi regime,” adding that NATO would seek to cooperate with its partners in the region and welcome their contributions.

Mr. Rasmussen also said that all NATO allies were committed to fulfil their obligations under the U.N. resolution and that is why the alliance decided to assume responsibility for the no-fly zone.

Mr. Rasmussen’s announcement of the second phase of the military operations came after more than five days of aerial bombardment of targets in Libya by the Western alliance comprising the United States, the United Kingdom, France and other nations.

Even as the transfer of command and control was outlined, the U.S. State Department, in a conference call with journalists on Friday, denied that any cracks had emerged in the Western alliance, or in the international community’s support for military action against the Qadhafi regime.

Specifically, State Department Spokesperson Mark Toner said in response to a question from The Hindu that notwithstanding suggestions that nations such as Russia had disputed the U.S.’ claims surrounding civilian casualties resulting from the air strikes, the key backers of UNSCR 1973, authorising the no-fly zone, were on board.

Mr. Toner said that even if some countries had differing views on the ongoing action in Libya, it was due to the rapid deployment of force and actions taken on the ground by the Western alliance that a humanitarian crisis in Benghazi been averted.

From The Hindu

In the context of the greening of the India-United States relationship, it has often been said that one of the most celebrated aspects of the two countries' “shared beliefs” is their unshakeable commitment to secularism or religious pluralism, howsoever defined.

While this was exactly the sentiment that Indian Ambassador to the U.S. Meera Shankar tried to convey in a speech at Emory University on February 24, the irony was that the embassy itself later appeared to have decided to redact one part of her statement on that subject — that the multi-religious nature of the Indian state was symbolised by the fact that it had “a Christian as the leader of the largest national political party.”

A video of the Ambassador's speech, posted on the You Tube website (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBWE0Bl3-a0), clearly shows Ms. Shankar saying: “Today the fact that we have a woman Head of State, a Sikh Head of Government, a Muslim Vice-President and a Christian as the leader of the largest national political party, is perhaps the best statement of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious nature of our state.”

Yet the transcript of the speech posted on the Indian embassy's website (http://www.indianembassy.org/prdetail1685/keynote-address-by-ambassador-meera-shankar-at-emory-universityandrsquo%3Bs-emerging-india-summit-on-24th-february-2011-andquot%3Bwhy-india-mattersandquot%3B) leaves out the section of the sentence that makes an obvious reference to Sonia Gandhi, head of the Congress.

A reply has not yet been received to a request for comments made to the Indian embassy here.

While it is generally rare for any senior member of the Indian government to make a direct reference to Ms. Gandhi's religion, especially during an election year, the controversy undercuts the candid and positive nature of Ms. Shankar's remarks on religious tolerance in India.

From The Hindu

Revealing the persistence of cracks in the Western alliance that is bombing targets in Libya, United States Defence Secretary Robert Gates, currently in Moscow, struggled to convince his Russian interlocutors that military operations in Libya were not resulting in civilian casualties.

At a joint press conference with Mr. Gates and Defence Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov, Mr. Serdyukov said that recent developments in Libya demonstrated that the imposition and enforcement of the no-fly-zone, under a United Nations resolution, was experiencing real difficulties which resulted in “destroying civilian facilities and killing civilians”.

He added that this should not have been allowed to happen, and Russia had “informed our U.S. counterparts of our opposition, and we urge all belligerent parties to do their best to stop the violence, and we believe that an immediate ceasefire and a dialogue between the belligerent parties is the surest way to reliable security of civilians.”

Responding to this remark Mr. Gates said, “The coalition is going through great lengths to avoid civilian casualties and most of the targets are air defence targets isolated from populated areas... The significant military fighting that has been going on should recede in the next few days.”

Further Mr. Gates later said to reporters, “I am a little curious, frankly, about the tone that has been taken. It is perfectly evident that the vast majority, if not nearly all, civilian casualties have been inflicted by [Libyan leader Muammar] Qadhafi.”

Arguing that most of the Western alliance’s targets were in isolated non-populated areas, including air defence sites he struck back at the comments by Mr. Serdyukov saying, “It is almost as though some people here are taking at face value Qadhafi‘s claims about the number of civilian casualties, which as far as I am concerned, are just outright lies.”

Earlier reports noted that the Russian Parliament had called for an immediate halt to foreign armed strikes in Libya and warned the Western states that their “indiscriminate” use of force could spur more countries to acquire nuclear arms.

While the U.S., United Kingdom and France have led the Western alliance’s military operations in Libya, entailing more than four days of aerial bombing to date, other United Nations Security Council members including India, China, Russia and Germany abstained from the vote passing the resolution that authorised the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya.

The U.S. has also hinted that its involvement in the operations might wind down over time yielding leadership to European nations, with President Barack Obama saying at a press conference in El Salvador earlier this week, “I have absolutely no doubt that we will be able to transfer control of this operation to an international coalition. I had discussions with Prime Minister Cameron and President Sarkozy [and] NATO is meeting today as we speak to work out some of the mechanisms for command and control.”

He further noted that there was already a “significant reduction in the number of U.S. planes that are involved in operations over Libya, because, as I said initially, our job was to take our unique capabilities and create a space to shape the environment so that the operation of a no-fly zone could operate effectively, and to make sure that our immediate humanitarian goals could be met.”

According to reports, the International Energy Agency says that more than 70 per cent of Libya's oil is exported to European nations, many of which “have spent years investing in Libya's oil industry”. In particular, it was noted that by the end of October 2010, the number of French companies in Libya had nearly doubled from 2008 and most of them were in the energy sector.

From The Hindu

What began as an academic exercise to study the correlation between caste politics and policy-making in India has culminated in an insightful yet accessible book that provides an understanding on why some Indian States have managed to alleviate poverty better than others.

Patrons of the Poor: Caste Politics and Policymaking in India (Oxford University Press) by Narayan Lakshman engages in a comparative analysis of the policy-making processes and political histories of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, case studies and interviews with top political leaders, bureaucrats and academics to argue that patterns of caste dominance combined with populist policies could explain whether States adopt pro-poor policies or not.

M.S. Swaminathan, Chairman of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), launched the book under the joint auspices of the OUP and The Madras Book Club by handing over the first copies to N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, and K. Nagaraj, professor, the Asian College of Journalism.

Professor Swaminathan said the book was very relevant to the contemporary context in India, where pervasive poverty, inequities and mass deprivation coexisted with a rising growth rate.

Noting that the patronage approach to the poor persisted even today in the formulation of mass welfare programmes, Professor Swaminathan said the country's poor would remain so as long as they were seen as beneficiaries of schemes and not as citizens with rights. It is only recently that India was moving from a charity model of poverty alleviation to a rights-based approach, he said.

Mr. Nagaraj said one of the positive aspects about the book was its explicit rejection of the notion of poverty as a narrow and uni-dimensional issue. Terming some of its findings “fascinating,” he said the book was in the league of rare studies that situate politics in the matrix of caste-class relationship on the one hand and the political mobilisation of the poor on the other.

Moderating a discussion, Mr. Ram said the book was interesting and instructive and “connects with many areas we are concerned about and are trying to find answers to” in its systematic analysis of the complex phenomenon of political economy.

He said the book also represented a bold attempt to explore patterns of caste dominance and pro-poor policy-making, and provided powerful insights into a range of issues that are currently on the national agenda.

Y.K. Saxena, OUP representative, said the book embodied the OUP's values of excellence in research, scholarship and education.

Introducing the book, Mr. Lakshman, who is the Washington correspondent of The Hindu, said the one question that motivated the work was why the progress of poverty alleviation remained tardy in India even six decades after Independence.

In attempting to examine the reasons for the deepening of regional disparities at the State level and the factors that drive poverty alleviation, the book classified the States according to the regime type (representative of lower castes in Tamil Nadu and middle class-oriented in Karnataka) and mapped that to the respective policy agendas, Mr. Lakshman said.

S. Muthiah, historian and founder-member of the Madras Book Club, also participated.

Photograph credit: Politico

From The Hindu

In the latest twist to the saga of Bradley Manning, the United States military intelligence officer in jail over allegations of leaking private files and cables to Wikileaks, the whistleblower website, a top representative of the State Department publicly agreed that Mr. Manning was being "mistreated".

Even as Mr. Manning released his first direct communication from his holding cell in a military facility in Quantico, Virginia, P.J. Crowley, Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Public Affairs and a spokesman for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said at a seminar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that the treatment meted out to Mr. Manning was "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid on the part of the Department of Defence".

Mr. Manning, who had earlier only spoken through his lawyer, David Coombs, or his friends, said in his letter, that ever since being placed on suicide watch in January, he was being forced to strip naked every night and subjected to "unlawful pre-trial punishment".

His letter further alleges that his "prescription eyeglasses were taken away from me and I was forced to sit in essential blindness", and, often becoming upset, "Out of frustration, I clenched my hair with my fingers and yelled: 'Why are you doing this to me? Why am I being punished? I have done nothing wrong.'"

Friction within Obama administration

Mr. Crowley’s comments revealed frictions within the Barack Obama administration on how to deal with Mr. Manning, with the President issuing comments that effectively condoned Mr. Manning’s treatment.

At a news conference Mr. Obama said, "With respect to Private Manning, I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards... They assure me that they are."

Implying that Mr. Manning’s solitary confinement and stripping was for his own protection Mr. Obama added, "I cannot go into details about some of their concerns... but some of this has to do with Private Manning’s safety as well."

Earlier this month the government’s Justice Department announced that Mr. Manning had been slapped with 22 new charges including "aiding the enemy", punishable by death. Although the charges did not explicitly identify who the "enemy" in question was, they alleged that when he was based out of his post in Iraq, he did "steal, purloin, or knowingly convert to his use or the use of another, a record or thing of value of the U.S..."

In January this year, a non-profit group called Psychologists for Social Responsibility wrote an open letter to Secretary of Defence Robert Gates in which it said it was "deeply concerned about the conditions under which PFC Bradley Manning is being held", citing in particular the fact that he was in solitary confinement for approximately 23 hours a day in a cell approximately six feet wide and twelve feet in length "for no discernable reason other than punishment..."

In his letter, Mr. Manning also commented on a recent decision of the United States government to keep him under even more restrictive conditions through a Prevention of Injury (PoI) order. In particular, he shared excerpts from the observation records which, according to The Guardian, consistently report that Mr. Manning was "respectful, courteous and well spoken", and "does not have any suicidal feelings at this time".

Further, reports said that 16 separate entries made from 27 August until the records stopped on January 28 "show that Manning was evaluated by prison psychiatrists who found he was not a danger to himself and should be removed from the PoI order".

From The Hindu

A controversial Congressional hearing on the radicalisation of American Muslims, held here on Thursday, was panned as being short on substance and high on emotion, with criticism heaped on the Chairman of the hearing, Republican Peter King of New York, in particular for “demonising” the Muslim community.

The most scathing criticism in the testimonies for the House of Representatives hearing on “The Extent of Radicalisation in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response”, was by Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who broke down in tears as he described the heroic sacrifice of Salman Hamdani, killed during the attacks of September 11, 2001. Mr. Hamdani, a paramedic who lost his life as a first-responder trying to assist those in the twin towers, ironically faced allegations of extremism before the truth of his patriotism and sacrifice came out. “Mohammed Salman Hamdani was a fellow American who gave his life for other Americans... His life should not be defined as a member of an ethnic group or a member of a religion, but as an American who gave everything for his fellow citizens,” Mr. Ellison said. A member of the hearing reportedly pointed out the irony that Mr. King had a reputation as a sympathiser of the militant Irish Republican Army during its heydays in the 1980s. Earlier this week thousands of protestors marched in New York's Times Square against the proposed hearing.

While the White House supported the hearings, it was equally careful to re-state President Barack Obama's position outlined in his Cairo speech in 2009 when he said: “Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism. It is an important part of promoting peace.” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said: “We have made clear that we welcome congressional engagement on this issue because we think it's an important issue. Our approach is that we do not believe that in America we should practise guilt by association.” Mr. Carney added it was because of the cooperation with the Muslim American community that the government was able to “do the things we are able to do to prevent attacks and it is that very cooperation that we seek going forward and that has been so helpful”.

Yet Mr. King appeared to be unapologetic about conducting the hearing. “I am well aware that these hearings have generated considerable controversy and opposition... But to back down would be a craven surrender to political pressure,” he said.

From The Hindu

Illinois became the 16th State of the United States to abolish the death penalty when its Governor, Pat Quinn, announced the decision on Wednesday.

Mr. Quinn, a former supporter of capital punishment, said he believed a ban on the death penalty was justified so long as it was “impossible to devise a system that is consistent, that is free of discrimination on the basis of race, geography or economic circumstance, and that always gets it right.”

Commenting on how the innocent are sometimes placed on death row and executed Mr. Quinn noted that since 1977, Illinois had seen 20 people exonerated from death row, a record that said “should trouble us all.”

The Governor said because the criminal justice system was “broken” in this regard he would also be commuting the sentences of those currently on death row to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole or release.

He also said that there was no credible evidence that the death penalty had a deterrent effect on the crime of murder and that the “enormous sums” expended by the State in maintaining a death penalty system would be better spent on preventing crime and assisting victims' families in overcoming their pain and grief.

Anticipating some of the ire likely to come his way for the abolition of the death penalty he said that he had heard from family members who lost loved ones to murder that “maintaining a flawed death penalty system will not bring back their loved ones, will not help them to heal and will not bring closure to their pain.”

Mr. Quinn's action comes even as numerous U.S. states are experimenting with the cocktail of lethal drugs delivered to execute inmates. In particular the Oklahoma State Penitentiary used a veterinary anaesthetic drug called pentobarbital, more commonly used to put down dogs, to execute John Duty (58 last December.

This method of execution, which has fuelled debates on the death penalty constituting “cruel and unusual punishment,” followed after the sole manufacturer of barbiturate sodium thiopental in the United States, a company called Hospira, ran out of stock earlier last year and said that it did not expect to resume production until 2011.

From The Hindu

In a dramatic, 30-minute legislative procedure that caught their Democratic opponents entirely off-guard, Wisconsin Senate Republicans passed a Bill on Wednesday that pared back the rights of unions to negotiate pay rises to historically low levels and swiftly ended a hard-fought political battle to prevent a the erosion of their collective bargaining power.

While recent weeks had seen Wisconsin Democrats fleeing the State to avoid the necessary quorum for the passage of the bill, Republicans led by Governor Scott Walker got around that manoeuvre by detaching the financial clauses of the Bill, a move that made it possible to pass the Bill without the quorum.

The passage of the so-called Budget Repair Bill, aimed at curbing the State's out-of-control anticipated budget deficit according to Mr. Walker, will now force public sector workers to accept the equivalent of an eight-per-cent pay cut in the form of increased payments to pension and health schemes.

Reacting to the move, leader of the Senate Democrats Mark Miller was quoted as saying: “Their disrespect for the people of Wisconsin and their rights is an outrage that will never be forgotten.”

The Guardian quoted Mr. Miller as saying, “Tonight, 18 Senate Republicans conspired to take government away from the people. We will join the people of Wisconsin in taking back their government.”

Following the proposal to pass it in the Senate, protestors from across the State had taken over the Capitol building in Madison. Democratic leaders then decamped for other States such as Illinois in a bid to stave off the Bill's passage.

This week's developments, however, may seal the fate of public sector workers in other States too, where the trend towards curtailing union rights has been bolstered by growing Tea-Party-based fiscal conservatism and broader rightwing agendas.

From The Hindu

In the backdrop of the approaching United States-India Strategic Dialogue meetings in New Delhi this spring, the 11th U.S.-India Defence Policy Group (DPG) met in Washington during March 3-4 for extensive discussion on strengthening bilateral defence ties, particularly in the areas of maritime security, counterterrorism, disaster relief, and personnel exchanges.

According to officials at the Indian embassy here the meetings were co-chaired by Mr. Pradeep Kumar, Defence Secretary, Government of India and Michelle Flournoy, Under Secretary of Defence for Policy. Officials said that Mr. Kumar also met William Burns, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and William Lynn, Deputy Secretary of Defence.

Reaffirming that the bilateral defence cooperation was an “important facet of the overall India-U.S. strategic partnership,” Mr. Kumar and Ms. Flournoy expressed satisfaction at the progress in this area, noting in particular the increasing number of joint exercises that the two armed forces held regularly. Additionally India’s procurement of defence equipment such as C-130J aircraft was an important aspect of this progress, officials said.

In a statement Indian embassy also said that both sides had “welcomed the removal of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Bharat Dynamics Limited from the U.S. Entities List,” especially as this relaxation of restrictions would likely open up new opportunities for cooperation in the field of defence supplies and industrial and technological cooperation between the two countries more generally.

During the meetings the reports of four sub-groups of the DPG were reviewed and a policy-level dialogue was held on the global strategic and security situation.

On broader regional themes both sides touched upon the multilateral security architecture in Asia and looked forward to continued cooperation in regional organisations, officials said, explaining that the two sides had agreed that the next DPG meetings would be held in New Delhi early next year.

From The Hindu

United States President Barack Obama found himself in a deeper hole than ever on the subject of Guantanamo Bay prison this week, after he issued an executive order allowing indefinite detention without trial of inmates being held at the U.S. military installation.

The order, which will be applied to 47 out of the 172 prisoners being held at Guantánamo, militates against Mr. Obama's campaign promise to eventually close the Bush-era prison.

While on the one hand the order sought to institute periodic reviews of the case of each inmate, it also recognised that military commissions, not only civilian courts, are an “important tool in combating international terrorists that fall within their jurisdiction.” While 36 inmates at Guantanamo Bay are already due to be tried before military commissions, the remaining 89 were reportedly cleared for eventual release.

In January a civilian court sentenced Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (36), a Guantanamo Bay detenu and alleged Al-Qaeda member involved in the 1998 bombings of the U.S.' embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, to life in prison despite being acquitted on all 276 murder and attempted murder charges and four conspiracy charges brought against him.

Both with Ghailani and with numerous other prisoners at Guantanamo legal cases against have been fraught with “evidentiary problems,” which in most situations has implied that the evidence available had been obtained via the use of torture, and could thus be inadmissible in court. While Mr. Obama's latest order requires prisoners to submit documentary evidence every six months their cases will only be reviewed every three years, reports said, leading human rights campaigners to criticise the order for amounting to a volte-face by the White House.

Reports quoted Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union as saying, “It is virtually impossible to imagine how one closes Guantánamo in light of this executive order... In a little over two years, the Obama administration has done a complete about-face.”

Yet Mr. Obama in a statement defended the order, arguing, “From the beginning of my Administration, the U.S. has worked to bring terrorists to justice consistent with our commitment to protect the American people and uphold our values. Today, I am announcing several steps that broaden our ability to bring terrorists to justice, provide oversight for our actions, and ensure the humane treatment of detainees.”