Sunday, March 21, 2010
Tea Party protest turns hostile
From The Hindu
During a protest over the weekend, organised by the conservative Tea Party movement, crowds attacked Democratic members of Congress present on the scene with racist slurs and abuses over sexual orientation, revealing an ugly side of political polarisation the United States.
The protests — centred around the healthcare reform bill that Congress was scheduled to vote on — turned hostile as members of the Congressional Black Caucus were leaving the Longworth House office building from across the Capitol.
According to a member of staff for Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, Representative John Lewis of Georgia was subjected to racist slurs and a derogatory term relating to sexual orientation was hurled at Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, an openly gay Congressman. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri was spat on by a protestor.
In a statement to the Huffington Post Mr. Clyburn said, “It was absolutely shocking to me… Fifty years ago as of last Monday... I led the first demonstrations in South Carolina... And quite frankly I heard some things today I have not heard since… March 15, 1960 when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus.” Mr. Clyburn said he had told one heckler that he was “the hardest person in the world to intimidate, so they better go somewhere else.”
He went on to add, “A lot of us have been saying for a long time that much of this… is not about health care at all. A lot of those people today demonstrated that this… is about trying to extend a basic fundamental right to people who are less powerful.”
In a similar vein Mr. Frank was reported to have said, “I'm disappointed with the unwillingness to be civil… I was… surprised by the rancour. What it means is obviously the health care bill is proxy for a lot of other sentiments, some of which are perfectly reasonable, but some of which are not.”
According to reports, Capitol police escorted the members of Congress into the Capitol after the confrontation. At least one demonstrator was reported arrested in connection with the spitting incident although a spokesman for Mr. Cleaver was reported as saying that he would not be pressing charges.
Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union programme on Sunday, Democrat John Larson and Republican Mike Spence, both from the House of Representatives, condemned the incident.
The Tea Party movement, which rose into prominence last year, is a fiscally conservative political group whose primary appeal was based on its opposition to the stimulus package of 2009 and expansionary social welfare policies such as healthcare reform.
Labels: Barack Obama, Congress, Democrats, Tea Party Movement
Thursday, September 10, 2009
"NREGA changed dynamics in poor States"
From The Hindu (with S. Vydhianathan)
Photo: PTI
The "real power" of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) "is in how it reshapes the labour market and puts a floor below poor people," according to AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi.
Addressing mediapersons here on Thursday, Mr. Gandhi said the NREGA gave the poor support in the labour market by not letting them fall below a certain level. "No matter who you are, you can get 100 days of work at a particular salary," he said.
"This has changed completely the dynamics in poor States like Uttar Pradesh, in areas where it has been used effectively, which frankly are limited." In States like Andhra Pradesh, it has "revolutionised the system," he said.
Arguing that the Congress had a different view from that of other parties in India, Mr. Gandhi said, "On the one side you have the BJP and its view is of an 'India Shining' concept. They say: let us focus all our efforts on that India with opportunity and let us not worry about the India with no opportunity."
On the other side are the Left parties, which focus on the India without opportunity and ignore the India with opportunity, according to Mr. Gandhi.
"That is the difference between the three formations. What we are saying is, we are going to bridge these two Indias. And we are going to make sure that this one India that is formed has opportunity for all."
Touching on the gulf between rich and poor India and the Congress approach towards bridging it, Mr. Gandhi said, "The central thrust of what the Congress does and is going to do for the next couple of years is try and recreate that one India but ensure that it is an India of opportunity for all."
Underscoring the redistributive nature of welfare policies adopted by the UPA government, he said, "The idea is that you take the India of opportunity, you grow that India. Then you take some of the benefits and put them into the villages and thus engage and integrate that India into the first India."
Mr. Gandhi said that in the effort to bridge the gap between the poor and the rich Indias, "NREGA is one such weapon we are using. Massive expansion of the education system is another weapon. Massive expansion of the health system is the third. Universal ID is the fourth weapon."
Mr. Gandhi strongly opposed the integration of rivers in the country, stating that it would have serious implications on environment. He said interlinking of rivers within a State might be a workable proposal but the integration of the entire river system in the country would be "disastrous." He hastened to add that this was his personal view and not that of the Central government.
Asked about the idea that MPs should fly economy class because of the downturn, Mr. Gandhi said austerity measures should be the norm. "I don't think there should a phase where there should be austerity measures and then a phase where we should not have austerity measures. I think, as a politician, you have a duty to be austere."
Photo: PTI
The "real power" of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) "is in how it reshapes the labour market and puts a floor below poor people," according to AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi.
Addressing mediapersons here on Thursday, Mr. Gandhi said the NREGA gave the poor support in the labour market by not letting them fall below a certain level. "No matter who you are, you can get 100 days of work at a particular salary," he said.
"This has changed completely the dynamics in poor States like Uttar Pradesh, in areas where it has been used effectively, which frankly are limited." In States like Andhra Pradesh, it has "revolutionised the system," he said.
Arguing that the Congress had a different view from that of other parties in India, Mr. Gandhi said, "On the one side you have the BJP and its view is of an 'India Shining' concept. They say: let us focus all our efforts on that India with opportunity and let us not worry about the India with no opportunity."
On the other side are the Left parties, which focus on the India without opportunity and ignore the India with opportunity, according to Mr. Gandhi.
"That is the difference between the three formations. What we are saying is, we are going to bridge these two Indias. And we are going to make sure that this one India that is formed has opportunity for all."
Touching on the gulf between rich and poor India and the Congress approach towards bridging it, Mr. Gandhi said, "The central thrust of what the Congress does and is going to do for the next couple of years is try and recreate that one India but ensure that it is an India of opportunity for all."
Underscoring the redistributive nature of welfare policies adopted by the UPA government, he said, "The idea is that you take the India of opportunity, you grow that India. Then you take some of the benefits and put them into the villages and thus engage and integrate that India into the first India."
Mr. Gandhi said that in the effort to bridge the gap between the poor and the rich Indias, "NREGA is one such weapon we are using. Massive expansion of the education system is another weapon. Massive expansion of the health system is the third. Universal ID is the fourth weapon."
Mr. Gandhi strongly opposed the integration of rivers in the country, stating that it would have serious implications on environment. He said interlinking of rivers within a State might be a workable proposal but the integration of the entire river system in the country would be "disastrous." He hastened to add that this was his personal view and not that of the Central government.
Asked about the idea that MPs should fly economy class because of the downturn, Mr. Gandhi said austerity measures should be the norm. "I don't think there should a phase where there should be austerity measures and then a phase where we should not have austerity measures. I think, as a politician, you have a duty to be austere."
Labels: AICC, BJP, Congress, integration of rivers, Left parties, NREGA, Rahul Gandhi, universal ID
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
India should accept climate change flow obligations, ask for superfund: Jagdish Bhagwati
Quid pro quo in services sector negotiations is needed. But so are rules on hiring and firing.
Jagdish Bhagwati, University Professor at Columbia University and Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, is regarded as one of the foremost international trade economists of his generation. He has been Economic Policy Adviser to Arthur Dunkel, Director General of GATT (1991-93), Special Adviser to the UN on Globalization, and External Adviser to the WTO. In this interview to The Hindu in Chennai, Professor Bhagwati outlined some of the key challenges that remain for India in the climate change discussions in Copenhagen in December 2009 and in the upcoming negotiations on the Doha Round. Edited excerpts
On climate change: how much progress do the recent discussions, including agreeing a cap on global temperature rises, represent for countries like India and China? In some cases domestic constituencies may be hard to convince on the actions required to meet targets.
If you look back at Kyoto, we have two problems. One is that there is a carbon sink up there and the bulk of it, something like 80 per cent, has come from the West, predominantly from the United States and the European Union (EU). So you have that as one fact. The other fact is the current flow obligation. Call the carbon sink the stock problem. Then we have the flow problem because we are currently discharging CO2 into the air. That is where China in particular, in gross emissions, is almost exceeding the U.S. now and we are the third or the fourth.
There the compromise was arrived at when people said, “You have been doing a lot [of polluting] in the past, you have damaged the environment, do not blame us, we should have no obligations now” – that was taken at face value. Tim Wirth, who represented the U.S., and Madeleine Albright, agreed that the way to fix this disparity between flow and stock obligations is to say “You do not have to pay anything now.” That was stalled in the Senate. Senator Byrd and Senator Hagel led the fight in the bipartisan [debate]. But the resolution was passed 95-0; they said: “We should not let off India and China; it will affect the competitiveness of our industries.”
I came up with the idea that we should address the stock problem separately from the flow problem. We should expect India and China to assume flow obligations but part of that solution has to be that the stock obligation is fulfilled by the West. Then I found that the Americans themselves have what they call a “Superfund,” under which strict liability is assigned for past damage – they have a tort liability.
But this addresses the stock side; what do you propose for the flow side?
If we say that the West has to give us money for us to adopt new technologies, why should they want to do that? They are all saying “No” right now. But if you say “You have got to pay for past damages if you want us to accept current obligations;” that is fair and equitable. Then that money, once the superfund is established, can be used for exactly the kind of things India is asking for — for mitigation, for accommodation, and for financing the creation of public goods and so on.
I have also tried hard to get the Indian side to accept this. I have sent my paper to the Prime Minister. Sometimes they say “But we have already asked for funds.” But that is not the issue. If you simply ask for funds, that sounds like asking for aid. This is not aid – it is really a matter of what the West owes if they want us also to do something. That is fair and equitable. So I think that is an area where you can really make progress on this issue. We will also have to decide what the current flow obligations we take on are. On the stock side, I think it should really be a way to get at this problem.
The U.S. has taken the approach of the Waxman-Markey Bill which was just passed in the Congress House. They are going to use cap and trade, which is the quantitative equivalent of a carbon tax. If India, for example, does not have a similar carbon tax, then they will put in a tax adjustment, meaning essentially it is a tariff against the Indians, thereby making them pay for it. At one level it is a matter of intimidation. I do not think it will work when we are objecting to it.
Supposing we lose [this debate] — do we then surrender? We cannot go against the WTO but the only thing we have to and should say is, “We can also take WTO action against you, if you start playing this game.” For one thing, we can say our petroleum tax is much higher than that of the U.S. and we can call it a carbon tax as it does relate to carbon also. So we can say “We will put a tax on your exports to us.” We can do that. We can play the same game within the carbon game or we can shift the two nuclear reactor sites under the G8 to the French or the Russians. We are now big enough, in my opinion, to contemplate such options.
Recent reports have indicated that 83 new measures that go against free trade principles have been enacted across countries. Are you not worried that these will be difficult to roll back?
Most of the actions reported are safeguard actions and anti-dumping actions. Those are actions where you are exercising your rights. One wishes they were not doing so, but you cannot really object to them as such exit strategies are built into WTO rules, at least on a temporary basis. Especially when things get rough – and right now they are – the ability to toe the line is being strained in many democratic countries. So that part does not really bother me that much. But if you go beyond that and look at protectionist interventions where you are violating your obligations, by doing things that you agreed not to do, that is something that is still not on a scale that you need to worry about.
In terms of effects on trade, are they any different from actions that violate WTO rules?
The effect would be identical. But the effect in terms of the prospective impact may not. When you undermine rules, people feel they can do a variety of things and they are not constrained. Therefore the expectations you set up are important. This is the problem about settling the Doha trade negotiations. Therefore the rules such as we have built in will get undermined. That is what people are worried about – the effect on the system. It is hard to quantify that because that is actually a matter of how the situation will unfold.
Do you not think protectionist “Buy American”-type clauses associated with the bailout funds will stall the Doha process further?
If you look at all these actions, it is a matter of what value of trade they cover. Look at anti-dumping actions. You find, typically in the literature, the argument that India is the worst user of anti-dumping actions, not the U.S. or the EU. But when you actually look at the value of trade you discover that it is minuscule compared to what [the U.S. and the EU] are doing. So you have to put it into some perspective like that. I do not think in the value of the trade covered, it amounts to anything very substantial.
[Regarding policies] like “Buy American”, they are going to realise as soon as they are out of trouble that this is not really what they want to do because there has been so much criticism. Even Obama, because of all these criticisms coming particularly from people who are worried about export markets, like Caterpillar and GE and so on, put in a rider or qualifier saying it has to be consistent with our WTO obligations.
What would be the elements of the open world economy? You mentioned trade and investment and the movement of natural persons.
What we are talking about is temporary immigration. We should be able to export services, but embodied in people. That is what we call the movement of natural persons. We are talking about service transactions. So the second leg is GATS, the General Agreement on Trade and Services.
These are some of the issues that can be put into the Doha Round but so far we have no real concessions on these issues. It is something which could be taken up by the Indian administration. But against that you have to give something in the services sector. What would we give? In areas like banking and insurance we are sufficiently developed and resilient to be able to offer something. It is difficult to offer, in my view, any entry subject to a given level of protection simply because we do not have a safeguard clause in the services sector.
This is what we could do – have a service sector quid pro quo, where both countries would be better off. But I think we need rules also on hiring and firing because that is where everybody is going now. Even in India there is great pressure. Is not that what the recent trouble in the airline industry is about?
Longer version of article
Jagdish Bhagwati, University Professor at Columbia University and Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, is regarded as one of the foremost international trade economists of his generation. He has been Economic Policy Adviser to Arthur Dunkel, Director General of GATT (1991-93), Special Adviser to the UN on Globalization, and External Adviser to the WTO. In this interview to The Hindu in Chennai, Professor Bhagwati outlined some of the key challenges that remain for India in the climate change discussions in Copenhagen in December 2009 and in the upcoming negotiations on the Doha Round. Edited excerpts
On climate change: how much progress do the recent discussions, including agreeing a cap on global temperature rises, represent for countries like India and China? In some cases domestic constituencies may be hard to convince on the actions required to meet targets.
If you look back at Kyoto, we have two problems. One is that there is a carbon sink up there and the bulk of it, something like 80 per cent, has come from the West, predominantly from the United States and the European Union (EU). So you have that as one fact. The other fact is the current flow obligation. Call the carbon sink the stock problem. Then we have the flow problem because we are currently discharging CO2 into the air. That is where China in particular, in gross emissions, is almost exceeding the U.S. now and we are the third or the fourth.
There the compromise was arrived at when people said, “You have been doing a lot [of polluting] in the past, you have damaged the environment, do not blame us, we should have no obligations now” – that was taken at face value. Tim Wirth, who represented the U.S., and Madeleine Albright, agreed that the way to fix this disparity between flow and stock obligations is to say “You do not have to pay anything now.” That was stalled in the Senate. Senator Byrd and Senator Hagel led the fight in the bipartisan [debate]. But the resolution was passed 95-0; they said: “We should not let off India and China; it will affect the competitiveness of our industries.”
I came up with the idea that we should address the stock problem separately from the flow problem. We should expect India and China to assume flow obligations but part of that solution has to be that the stock obligation is fulfilled by the West. Then I found that the Americans themselves have what they call a “Superfund,” under which strict liability is assigned for past damage – they have a tort liability.
But this addresses the stock side; what do you propose for the flow side?
If we say that the West has to give us money for us to adopt new technologies, why should they want to do that? They are all saying “No” right now. But if you say “You have got to pay for past damages if you want us to accept current obligations;” that is fair and equitable. Then that money, once the superfund is established, can be used for exactly the kind of things India is asking for — for mitigation, for accommodation, and for financing the creation of public goods and so on.
I have also tried hard to get the Indian side to accept this. I have sent my paper to the Prime Minister. Sometimes they say “But we have already asked for funds.” But that is not the issue. If you simply ask for funds, that sounds like asking for aid. This is not aid – it is really a matter of what the West owes if they want us also to do something. That is fair and equitable. So I think that is an area where you can really make progress on this issue. We will also have to decide what the current flow obligations we take on are. On the stock side, I think it should really be a way to get at this problem.
The U.S. has taken the approach of the Waxman-Markey Bill which was just passed in the Congress House. They are going to use cap and trade, which is the quantitative equivalent of a carbon tax. If India, for example, does not have a similar carbon tax, then they will put in a tax adjustment, meaning essentially it is a tariff against the Indians, thereby making them pay for it. At one level it is a matter of intimidation. I do not think it will work when we are objecting to it.
Supposing we lose [this debate] — do we then surrender? We cannot go against the WTO but the only thing we have to and should say is, “We can also take WTO action against you, if you start playing this game.” For one thing, we can say our petroleum tax is much higher than that of the U.S. and we can call it a carbon tax as it does relate to carbon also. So we can say “We will put a tax on your exports to us.” We can do that. We can play the same game within the carbon game or we can shift the two nuclear reactor sites under the G8 to the French or the Russians. We are now big enough, in my opinion, to contemplate such options.
Recent reports have indicated that 83 new measures that go against free trade principles have been enacted across countries. Are you not worried that these will be difficult to roll back?
Most of the actions reported are safeguard actions and anti-dumping actions. Those are actions where you are exercising your rights. One wishes they were not doing so, but you cannot really object to them as such exit strategies are built into WTO rules, at least on a temporary basis. Especially when things get rough – and right now they are – the ability to toe the line is being strained in many democratic countries. So that part does not really bother me that much. But if you go beyond that and look at protectionist interventions where you are violating your obligations, by doing things that you agreed not to do, that is something that is still not on a scale that you need to worry about.
In terms of effects on trade, are they any different from actions that violate WTO rules?
The effect would be identical. But the effect in terms of the prospective impact may not. When you undermine rules, people feel they can do a variety of things and they are not constrained. Therefore the expectations you set up are important. This is the problem about settling the Doha trade negotiations. Therefore the rules such as we have built in will get undermined. That is what people are worried about – the effect on the system. It is hard to quantify that because that is actually a matter of how the situation will unfold.
Do you not think protectionist “Buy American”-type clauses associated with the bailout funds will stall the Doha process further?
If you look at all these actions, it is a matter of what value of trade they cover. Look at anti-dumping actions. You find, typically in the literature, the argument that India is the worst user of anti-dumping actions, not the U.S. or the EU. But when you actually look at the value of trade you discover that it is minuscule compared to what [the U.S. and the EU] are doing. So you have to put it into some perspective like that. I do not think in the value of the trade covered, it amounts to anything very substantial.
[Regarding policies] like “Buy American”, they are going to realise as soon as they are out of trouble that this is not really what they want to do because there has been so much criticism. Even Obama, because of all these criticisms coming particularly from people who are worried about export markets, like Caterpillar and GE and so on, put in a rider or qualifier saying it has to be consistent with our WTO obligations.
What would be the elements of the open world economy? You mentioned trade and investment and the movement of natural persons.
What we are talking about is temporary immigration. We should be able to export services, but embodied in people. That is what we call the movement of natural persons. We are talking about service transactions. So the second leg is GATS, the General Agreement on Trade and Services.
These are some of the issues that can be put into the Doha Round but so far we have no real concessions on these issues. It is something which could be taken up by the Indian administration. But against that you have to give something in the services sector. What would we give? In areas like banking and insurance we are sufficiently developed and resilient to be able to offer something. It is difficult to offer, in my view, any entry subject to a given level of protection simply because we do not have a safeguard clause in the services sector.
This is what we could do – have a service sector quid pro quo, where both countries would be better off. But I think we need rules also on hiring and firing because that is where everybody is going now. Even in India there is great pressure. Is not that what the recent trouble in the airline industry is about?
Longer version of article
Labels: Buy American, China, climate change, CO2, Columbia, Congress, emissions, G8, GATS, India, Jagdish Bhagwati, multilateralism, pollution, superfund, WTO
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