Tag Archives: India

War On India: Naval Command Info Hacked By Chinese IP’s

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The Indian Express reports on July 1, 2012:

“Hackers have broken into sensitive naval computer systems in and around Visakhapatnam, the headquarters of the Eastern Naval Command, and planted bugs that relayed confidential data to IP addresses in China.

The Eastern Naval Command plans operations and deployments in the South China Sea — the theatre of recent muscle-flexing by Beijing — and beyond. India’s first nuclear missile submarine, INS Arihant, is currently undergoing trials at the Command.

The extent of the loss is still being ascertained, and officials said it was “premature at this stage” to comment on the sensitivity of the compromised data. But the Navy has completed a Board of Inquiry (BoI) which is believed to have indicted at least six mid-level officers for procedural lapses that led to the security breach.

The naval computers were found infected with a virus that secretly collected and transmitted confidential files and documents to Chinese IP addresses. Strict disciplinary action against the indicted officers is imminent.

Responding to a questionnaire sent by The Sunday Express on whether highly classified data had been sent to IP addresses in China due to the bug, the Navy said: “An inquiry has been convened and findings of the report are awaited. It needs to be mentioned that there is a constant threat in the cyber domain from inimical hackers worldwide.”

Sources, however, confirmed that classified data had been leaked, and the breach had possibly occurred because of the use of pen drives that are prohibited in naval offices. The virus was found hidden in the pen drives that were being used to transfer data from standalone computers to other systems, said a person familiar with the investigation.”

Desi Divas: Dr. Vijayanthimala Bali

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Celebrated Tamil and Hindi film actress, classical dancer/singer/choreographer, and research scholar,  wife of Dr. Bali of Chennai, twice elected to the Lok Sabha (Lower house of Indian parliament) and appointed to the Rajya Sabha (upper house), Dr. Vyjayanthimala  Bali(VIE-juh-yun-thee-mah-lah Bah-lee). [born, August 13, 1936]

Since the Western media doesn’t educate so much as propagandize in favor of western state interests, and  in service of those interests misrepresents the cultures that get in its way as inferior or degraded, I decided that I would add a category to my blog – desi beauties  – to celebrate beautiful brilliant women who exemplify the best Indian tradition.

Indian Cops Go After Online Game Bomb

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Sidin Vadukut comments on the Keystone Kops of the Indian government:

“Like most other Indians, my opinion of my government and its various agencies is very poor indeed. It is one of the wonders of the modern age how this nation gets by while the guys in charge mess up financial data, forget which country they represent at the UN, and in every other way get by in a thick, stinking haze of moronic incompetence.

Delhi Police, I am glad to say, is no different. If they are the first line of defence that the capital against law and order problems then Delhi–women, childern and all–is screwed. Kindly peruse the following story from the Times of India website. And weep.

Idiots run this country.

Delhi cops find ‘sticky bomb’ in game?

NEW DELHI: On Tuesday, police commissioner B K Gupta told reporters he had spent hours researching sticky bombs. Officers then distributed printouts which ostensibly explained what a sticky bomb is.

The printout stated, “Sticky bombs are a type of explosives crafted from one Bomb and 5 Gel. At point blank range, it can cause a total of 100 damage to mobs and 200 to the player”. It also listed ‘Statistics’ as: Damage 100, Max Stack 50, Shoot Speed 5, Use Time 24, Sell 1.

These seem unusual ingredients for making a bomb. A net search showed the matter seemed to have been downloaded from Terraria Wiki, used by gamers who play online game Terraria.

I don’t know what to say. I really don’t.

Hours researching sticky bombs? Wanker.

If you live in Delhi, I hope you feel safe knowing that your police force is infested with imbeciles.

India Broadband Forum has a fitting GIF for the occasion“

Indian Opposition Says No To Wal-Mart

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Bloomberg reports on Indian opposition to corporate giants forcing open the lucrative retail market:

“Opposition parties and government allies rounded on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s bid to open India’s retail sector to foreign companies like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), stalling parliament for a fifth day with their protests.

In a rare concerted attack on the ruling Congress party, Singh’s two largest parliamentary partners joined the opposition in criticizing the policy approved by the Cabinet last week, forcing both houses of parliament to adjourn. Overseas retailers stand to be barred from opening stores in at least 19 of India’s 45 largest cities with state assemblies set to veto their entry. “

I’m glad to hear this.   Even though it’s too little too late. The spineless Manmohan Singh has already opened up local mutual funds to foreign investment, with all the economic and other dangers of cross-border financial flows and hot money.

Of course, the globalist mouthpieces, (Time: Jyothi Thottam, “Why India Should Stop Fearing Walmart”), are anxious for it to happen.

The big media outlets like to put a local face on the policy (“India’s Wobbly Walmart Embrace’), but astute readers aren’t fooled.

One writes:

Let’s say our law says that Walmart will source 30% from small players. What about the rest, the 70%? Is it going to source 100% of it from India or is allowed to import the rest, i.e. 70%? According to the WTO you cannot stop them from importing.  The example the writer gave was from Bharti-Walmart which is a wholesale cash and carry store (like SAM’s) not Walmart – it is the consumer side which will kill the Kirana business and the Indian manufacturers. She talks about the food supply and global chains without even knowing what it means. …..

They are in the business of making money and lots of it for their US shareholders. They are not in the business of reducing cost for Indian consumers. If it happens that they buy in bulk in China and flood the Indian market with imports, so be it.  Today India is a net Export-Import deficit country with $85 Billion per year. This is the contribution of Dr. Singh…from a few billion a year trade deficit that we had before to having to borrow $85 Billion a year to pay our imports minus exports. So what do you think will happen when Walmart imports $100 Billion dollars worth of goods into India every year?

Now you have to somehow find current $85 Billion net deficit + $100 Billion = $185 Billion dollars PER YEAR.  In the case of the USA, it was simple. The USA borrowed $3 Trillion to pay the deficit. It has the luxury of printing dollars. So if China demands money, they can print it. They just recently printed $600 Billion. India can not do this and India will ultimately be screwed.  In the 17th Century, India was a net exporter. Then the Britishers came and India became a net importer and in turn a poor country. That will happen after a few years if our appetite for imports continues to grow and our exports dont keep up with the rise in imports as happened in the last many years. Today, we borrow soft money and hard money from the IMF, bonds, FDI in other sectors etc. to pay the difference of $85 Billion of dollars that we have to pay to import more than what we export. How long do you think this is sustainable? How long do you think we can continue to borrow either via the FDI route or via IMF loans to pay for our imports. India is one of the few countries where you can allow all these things, including changing our nuclear policy, allowing FDI, etc. without discussing this in Parliament first.

Remember also that Walmart started putting in RFID tags into their clothes from last year, August 1, 2010, making it possible at some point that you could be tracked anywhere you went, because of your clothes. This is incipiently fascistic.

India FDI Watch has a detailed report on what really happens when foreign lobbyists get big retail giants into the market, monopsony:

“Industrial licensing had brought monopolies to India but monopsony is a new phenomenon for India which has recently come to the forefront in the manufacturing goods sector due to the increased specialization in the global process of production. This has led to the concept of a single supplier to a large producer who obtains the goods at a ransom. The larger the amount of any commodity a large retailer can purchase, the greater the concession on price, delivery, it can extract. This is a demonstration of monopsonistic procurement and the awesome monopsonistic purchasing power which comes with it. This is unique to the modern world of digital instant communication (branding, streamlined logistics distribution can drive down prices still further) and hugely affects the agricultural commodities market also, as shown. The more of a commodity large retailers purchase in bulk, the lower the prices growers of agricultural commodities obtain!”

More in this report on how the globalists at WTO would like to destroy the decentralized production of food:

“The Bank has identified laws such as the Essential Commodities Act (1955) the Agricultural Produce and marketing Act (APMC 1972) and the Prevention of Black Marketing and Maintenance of Supplies of Essential Commodities Act (1980) which have defended the rights of farmers to a just price and the rights of the poor to a fair price for food, as having “prevented the free mobility of agricultural produce and thus segmented the Indian domestic market into many smaller markets.

The government has also imposed restrictions on foreign investment in the retail of agricultural commodities, and on both foreign and domestic private investment in wholesale. These restrictions have collectively discouraged and/or prevented the private sector from undertaking large-scale investment in agricultural storage, marketing, or processing activities – an example of horizontal fragmentation preventing desirable vertical integration. The result is that today there is no large, organized, efficient pan-Indian supply chain in the agricultural sector, including in horticulture. What the Bank defines as “fragmentation” is in fact self-organized local systems of production and trade which are not controlled by a centralized store or by centralized, monopolistic corporations. And the repeated attack on India’s “geography” shows how anti-nature World Bank’s basic economic thinking is. Not only the World Bank like to wish away India’s diversity and geography, it would like to destroy India’s food sovereignty.

Thus, the Bank takes apples grown in Himachal and says it would be cheaper to import them for Chennai. This was exactly the argument the trade liberalisers had used to justify wheat imports. However, the imported wheat turned out to be twice as costly as domestic wheat. Navdanya has filed a case in the Supreme Court against wheat imports.”

Note:

I’ve shopped at Walmart, and they have great prices, true. But in the US I don’t have that much of a choice of smaller shops.  In India, however, there are plenty of choices….and it should stay that way.  Anyway, I don’t think I should be shopping at Walmart, even if the prices are low.  It’s a question of choosing smart self-interest over self-defeating self-interest. I like cheap prices, but I also want to live in a country of small shops and farms, not one of huge commercial farms and supermarkets.

It’s time to buy from local retailers, wherever possible.

The American-made Retail E-guide features over 2500 American-made products from over a dozen popular retail stores like Dillard’s, Home Depot, TJ Maxx, and Costco.

How Americans Can Buy American
Post Office Box 780839, Orlando, Florida 32878-0839
Tel: 1-888-US OWNED (1-888-876-9633)
Emergency Backup: 407-234-4626
Email the Author: Roger Simmermaker
Web: http://www.howtobuyamerican.com

On this issue, I agree with OccupyWallStreet.

If we can’t lower taxes to bring companies back, we can boycott multinationals with predatory practices. Giant corporations of this kind have nothing to do with the free market.

From TowardFreedom:

“The shiny happy people featured in Wal-Mart advertisements, as well as the company’s continued PR claims of corporate responsibility (“We at Wal-Mart take an active interest in conserving the environment!”), simply doesn’t match the frustrating reality of their corporate behavior. Even the largely toothless Environmental Protection Agency, for example, a federal regulatory outfit that sometimes seems to exist simply to provide permits for giant corporate polluters, has managed to prosecute Wal-Mart for Clean Air Act violations in nine states, due to the company’s stubborn insistence on storing lawn fertilizer and other toxic chemicals in parking lots located near local watershed areas.

Greenwald even takes us to Wal-Mart’s global factories in where Wal-Mart workers put in 14 hour days 7 days a week and brush their teeth with fireplace ashes because their salaries don’t allow them to buy tooth paste. Implicitly in this global tour is the fact that, while wrapping itself in the American flag and a shallow sham version of patriotism, Wal-Mart cares very little for the health and well being of its workers, the environment, or the health of the U.S. economy as a whole, beyond the short-term dollar value it can extract to increase its profit margin.

While all of this is deeply sobering, Greenwald wisely chooses to end the film on a powerful high note, spotlighting and interviewing several citizen/activists – normal people just like you and me – who have chosen to organize their communities to oppose Wal-Mart’s predatory behavior and fight for more just and sustainable local economies.”

Globalists Subverting Liberal Arts Discourse In India

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Rajiv Malhotra discusses why Hinduism, despite being a religion of around a billion people, has never been understood or defended in the same way as Christianity and Islam. He calls on Hindus to understand and reproduce today the ancient tradition of purva-paksha (Sanskrit for ‘the first objection to any assertion in a debate’), that is, understanding the ideology or belief-system of another culture on its own terms.

While Christianity has produced an enormous range of texts to explain its world-view and to defend it and “place” it among other religions and traditions, modern and ancient, Hinduism has failed to do so, subscribing to a quietistic belief that possession of knowledge or truth within oneself is sufficient.

Thus, among all religions, Christianity, in all its variants, has produced the greatest quantity of discourse, and the most widely dispersed, allowing it to colonize intellectual discourse across the board.

This is true, even while it’s true that orthodox Christianity is under attack from secularists. Many Christians indeed feel themselves singled out for attack, among all religions.

However, that feeling is misleading. The real problem is that secularism (an outgrowth of liberal Christianity itself) is creating the friction.

It is not that other religions are attacking Christianity so much as that secularism, while still attached to its parent religion, Christianity, is colonizing the intellectual spaces of other cultures. Secularism uses the symbols and beliefs of Western Christianity as a target, although the real social ills under attack (consumer culture, racial or gender oppression etc.) belong to the societal structure of post-Christian Europe.

The globalist agenda, which involves the export of cultural Marxism to other cultures, draws the people in those cultures away from producing an effective discourse of their own real indigenous traditions. Instead, it seduces them to take up the globalist cultural Marxist discourse because of the opportunities for advancement that discourse offers through the international network attached to it.

Thus, a young Indian in school will be told that India has no “liberal arts” or “libertarian” tradition. He must get it all from the West. And when he does, thanks to foundation funding, it comes wearing the friendly face of “universal human rights”, “democracy”, “women’s rights’ or “gay rights”, under which lies a dominant secular discourse that in turn disguises an imperial and colonial agenda.

The colonialism is not the old-style colonialism of occupying land and taking over homes, although that too can be found in one of the cockpits of the globalist project, Israel.

The other cockpits in Europe and in America content themselves with propagating ideology that permits the colonization and domination of other people’s homelands through transnational state-capitalism, but they also try to protect they own homelands from reciprocal movement, by restricting and demonizing third-world immigration. They want freedom for their businesses, to put it bluntly, but no freedom for other human beings. That not only preserves the power of the Western establishment, but enhances it.

The new colonialism is cultural colonization. The subversion and destruction of civlizations, not simply Islam, but any civilization in the path of the globalist agenda.

In that sense, the Hindu civilization in India and orthodox forms of Christianity or non-European Christian communities, are also under attack.

The only difference is that the Christians have an enormous tradition, a dominant media and academic presence, and considerable wealth behind them.

So far, argues Malhotra, Hindus have not had anything similar. They build temples and endow charities, but they have not spent the same time or money defending and exposing to the public their own intellectual and cultural heritage. It might be time for them to do so aggressively.

Bottoms Up! Not Your Usual Nature Cure…

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I’m always on the look out for folk-remedies, but I think I might have a few qualms about this new…er…pee-ple’s drink in North India:

“If you pick up a labeled “health drink” in India you might find some unusual ingredients. The Indian reverence for cows, which gives religious significance to the bovine, has produced a good-for-you beverage made from cow urine.

The cow is considered by Hindus as symbolic of life-giving deities. The fundamentalist Hindu group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) launched Gauloka Peya, or “drink from the land of cow,” earlier this year.

Purushottam Toshniwal, a member of the cow protection unit of the RSS and the man who concocted the drink, says the group has already sold around 700 bottles to distributors.

RSS already sells soaps, shampoos, toothpastes, and skin-care creams made from cow urine and dung.

“Many were hesitant to try it in the beginning,” Mr. Toshniwal says. “However, once they tasted it, they liked it. You cannot taste the cow urine as it is mixed with other ingredients.” He also believes the drink will cure diseases.

The cow urine is distilled before it is mixed with traditional Indian herbs and medicinal plants such as Brahmi and basil and water in a 1-to-7 ratio. Gauloka Peya comes in four flavors – orange, khus(a fragrant Asian grass), rose, and lemon. A bottle costs about $3.

“It is like any regular sweet drink, without the harmful side effects,” Toshniwal says.”

Can’t be any worse than snails, crete d’ coque (cockscomb), bishop’s nose (chicken’s behind), prairie oysters (bulls’ testicles), Norman cheeses aged under cow-dung, chocolate-covered grasshoppers, slugs, and all the other less-than-savory savories that garnish the global plate.

The Indian cow is a one-critter industrial plant – providing its milk for drink, its hide for leather, its horn for vessels, its dung for fuel and medicinal products, and now its urine for medicinal drinks, shampoos, and soaps. (Still, I’m happy the ratio is 1 in 7 parts, not the other way round).

More here on the curious practice of curing your body with the fluids from your body:

“Through the ages there have been literally thousands of champions of this curious practice: In the early 1800s, a book titled One Thousand Notable Things describes the use of urine to cure scurvy, relieve skin itching, cleanse wounds, and many other treatments. An 18th century French dentist praised urine as a valuable mouthwash. In England during the 1860-70s, the drinking of one’s own urine was a common cure for jaundice. In more modern times, the Alaskan Eskimos have used urine as an antiseptic to treat wounds……..

…While many people are aware that Gandhi drank his urine, few know that leather-clad rocker Jim Morrison (who, like Gandhi, had an unwatchable movie made of his life) began the practice of drinking his urine while on an LSD-induced spiritual quest in the Mojave Desert. And like Gandhi, Morrison is now dead. As is John Lennon, another reputed fan of urine therapy. In fact, an entire legion of herion-addicted, long-haired rock and rollers are said to have tried Urine Therapy in the early 1970s following Keith Richards (unsuccessful) experimentations with the cure. One of the more famous modern day cases involves movie star Steve McQueen, who, it is said, in the last stages of cancer, survived solely on a diet of urine and boiled alligator skin prescribed by his Mexican doctors.”

And big pharma is not about to be left out of things:

“This summer, Enzymes of America plans to market its first major urine product called urokinase, an enzyme that dissolves blood clots and is used to treat victims of heart attacks. The company has contracts to supply the urine enzyme to Sandoz, Merrell Dow and other major pharmaceutical companies. Ironically, this enterprise evolved from Porta-John’s attempt to get rid of urine proteins-a major source of odour in portable toilets.”

A Columnist Asks What’s Wrong With India

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Chetan Bhagat at The Times of India:

“Countless articles, books, thesis, papers and research reports have tried to answer the question, ‘what is wrong with India ?’ Global experts are startled that a country of massive potential has one of the largest populations of poor people in the world. Isn’t it baffling that despite almost everyone agreeing that things should change, they don’t? Intellectuals give intelligent suggestions – from investing in infrastructure to improving the judicial system. Yet, nothing moves. Issues dating back thirty years ago, continue to plague India today. The young are often perplexed. They ask will things ever change? How? Whose fault is it that they haven’t?

Today, i will attempt to answer these tricky questions, although from a different perspective . I will not put the blame on everyone’s favorite punching bag– inept politicians. That is too easy an argument and not entirely correct. After all, we elect the politicians. So, for every MP out there, there are a few lakh people who wanted him or her there. I won’t give ‘policy’ solutions either – make power plants, improve the roads, open up the economy . It isn’t the lack of such ideas that is stalling progress. No, blocking progress is part of the unique psyche of Indians. There are three traits of our psyche, in particular, that are not good for us and our country. Each comes from three distinct sources – our school, our environment and our home.

The first trait is servility. At school, our education system hammers out our individual voices and kills our natural creativity, turning us into servile, coursematerial slaves. Indian kids are not encouraged to raise their voices in class, particularly when they disagree with the teacher. And of course, no subject teaches us imagination, creativity or innovation. Course materials are designed for no-debate kind of teaching. For example, we ask: how many states are there in India ? 28. Correct. Next question -how is a country divided into states? What criteria should be used? Since these are never discussed , children never develop their own viewpoint or the faculty to think.

The second trait is our numbness to injustice. It comes from our environment. We see corruption from our childhood. Almost all of us have been asked to lie about our age to the train TC, claiming to be less than 5 years old to get a free ride. It creates a value system in the child’s brain that ‘anything goes’, so long as you can get away with it. A bit of lying here, a bit of cheating there is seen as acceptable. Hence, we all grow up slightly numb to corruption. Not even one high profile person in India is behind bars for corruption right now. This could be because, to a certain extent, we don’t really care.

The third trait is divisiveness. This often comes from our home, particularly our family and relatives, where we learn about the differences amongst people. Our religion, culture and language are revered and celebrated in our families. Other people are different – and often implied to be not as good as us. We’ve all known an aunt or uncle who, though is a good person, holds rigid bias against Muslims, Dalits or people from different communities. Even today, most of India votes on one criterion – caste. Dalits vote for Dalits, Thakurs for Thakurs and Yadavs for Yadavs. In such a scenario, why would a politician do any real work? When we choose a mobile network, do we check if Airtel and Vodafone belong to a particular caste? No, we simply choose the provider based on the best value or service. Then, why do we vote for somebody simply because he has the same caste as ours?

We need mass self-psychotherapy for the three traits listed above. When we talk of change, you and I alone can’t replace a politician, or order a road to be built. However, we can change one thing – our mindset. And collectively, this alone has the power to make the biggest difference. We have to unlearn whatever is holding us back, and definitely break the cycle so we don’t pass on these traits to the next generation. Our children should think creatively, have opinions and speak up in class. They should learn what is wrong is wrong – no matter how big or small. And they shouldn’t hate other people on the basis of their background. Let us also resolve to start working on our own minds, right now. A change in mindset changes the way people vote, which in turn changes politicians.

And change does happen. In the 80s, we had movies like “Gunda” and “Khoon Pi Jaaonga”. Today, our movies have better content .They have changed. How? It is because our expectations from films have changed. Hence, the filmmakers had to change.

If we resolve today that we will vote on the basis of performance alone, we will encourage the voices against injustice and we will place an honest but less wealthy person on a higher pedestal than a corrupt but rich person. By doing so, we would contribute to India’s progress. If everyone who read this newspaper did this, it would be enough to change voting patterns in the next election. And then, maybe, we will start moving towards a better India. Are you on board? “

My Comment

This is an interesting and, within its limits, accurate piece about the character traits that contribute to the rampant socio-economic problems India faces. Those problems are in sharp focus right now, thanks to the ongoing bungling involved in the hosting of the Commonwealth Games at Delhi.

To many libertarians, these sorts of  generalizations are specious, collectivist, and possibly racist.

I disagree.

Granted, cultural generalizations are just that and shouldn’t be misapplied, it’s still possible for an acute observer to identify cultural problems with a degree of objectivity.

Chetan Bhagat manages this quite succinctly.

But if Bhagat had wanted to be even more succinct, he could have summarized his entire thesis in one word: dharma.

Dharma is often incorrectly defined as “duty,” in the Kantian sense.

While it can encompass that too, it’s more accurate to define it as “the way things should be” (social order)…or “the way we’re wired” (nature).

Dharma is perhaps a unique composite of duty, social and natural order, and individual destiny.

In its essence, then, it is a concept of the highest refinement and wisdom.

But even supernal ideas lose their value as civilizations lose touch with their sources.

Dharma, for many Indians, has ended up being “the way things are,” or, alternatively,  “que sera sera.”

It ends up inducing passivity. Which leads to the first two flaws identified in the article –  servility and apathy toward injustice.

That passivity also reinforces people in their instinctive tendency to prefer kith and kin over strangers.

If I had to pick just one character flaw that holds up India’s development, this would be it – dharma,, in its negative mode,  as slavish passivity.

However, the odd thing is that if I had to pick one thing that constituted a special strength in the Indian character, it would also be dharma.

But dharma in its positive mode – noble acceptance.

South Asia Increasingly Under Biometric Surveillance

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Wired.com has a piece on the collection of biometric data on hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan.

According to NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan commander Lt. Gen. William Caldwell (as reported to Wired’s Danger Room) the idea is to screen applicants for Army positions to keep out people with ties to the Taliban or criminal histories. But with biometric files are being compiled on Afghans at the rate of 20-25 per week, the process is likely to include a large number of ordinary citizens, especially as there’s now a  plan in the works that aims to have biometric ID’s for some 1.65 million Afghans by May 2011 through the “population registration division” of the Afghan Ministry of the Interior. Apparently, Caldwell is taking a leaf out of the book of General Petraeus, who used biometric monitoring to keep on top of the Iraqi resistance. It’s also modeled on monitoring during the siege of Fallujah, when the only way to get in and out of the place was with an ID card that needed an iris scan.

Right now, there are apparently two biometric projects in the country, one run by the Afghans accounting for about a quarter of a million files and the other by the Americans, which has nearly half a million, but  so far, there’s not been much integration between the two. The Afghan involvement is a change from the past, when Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has shut down  biometric monitoring at checkpoints by NATO as a violation of Afghan sovereignty.

Meanwhile,  neighboring India has already launched the first biometrically verified universal ID on a national scale. While not compulsory, it will be needed to access certain social and financial services, and is intended for the entire population of 1.2 billion. Biometric IDs were first used in India in 2002 to check corruption involved in accessing services and rations meant for the poor.

Earlier this year (July 2010), Afghanistan and Pakistan concluded a trade agreement that included the exchange of biometric data as part of the deal.

The Entrepreneurs Of Dharavi

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Financial commentator Joel Bowman looks at the Dharavi slum in Mumbai from a different angle:

“In an editorial pre-incarnation, your wayfaring author once found himself roaming the hot, sweaty crucible of economic chaos on the Indian Subcontinent in search of story and adventure. Mumbai squirms and pulses under the weight of three times the population density of New York City. It is both the commercial and entertainment centre of India, generating 5% of the country’s GDP and accounting for 25% of industrial output, 40% of maritime trade, and 70% of the nation’s capital transactions. Mumbai, sometimes still referred to as “Bombay,” is also a land of arresting dichotomy. For one, it is home to the world’s largest movie production industry…but just a short, bumpy ride from the glitz of Bollywood lays Dharavi, the largest slum in all of Asia. The latter area is a heaving mass of one million souls crammed into less than one square mile of unimaginable filth and grinding poverty. Needless to say, our visit to Mumbai’s underbelly was one of the most inspiring days of the whole trip.

The slum actually boasts an annual GDP of $660 million,” we wrote, awestruck after our short visit there, in The Rude Awakening. “The area, nestled between two railroad tracks, is bisected by an open-air sewage drain; commercial district on one side; residential on the other.

“On the commercial side, factories buzz around the clock, recycling the mass of waste spewed forth from around greater Mumbai. By day, ‘rag-pickers’ from the slum troll the city, collecting plastics, metals, bottles and all manner of other reusable matter. These materials are then melted down or repurposed in Dharavi before being sold back to metropolises all over India and, in some cases, across the region. Incredibly, all the machines are made on site. The men and women work 12 hours per day and each shift cooks a welcome meal for the incoming workers.

“Bound by the common oppression of multi-generational poverty, the people of Dharavi live and toil side by side, breaking their backs in the slum’s commercial district. Muslim people carve household Hindu temples, which then sell in the city’s markets, while the religious rift between the two groups rages on in the ‘outside world.’ Christian women watch over Muslim children, youngsters from different castes play together in the yards and Indian boys and girls learn in the slum’s schools alongside their classmates from all over Asia.”

Soros To Buy Stake In Bombay Stock Exchange, Goldman Seeks Commercial Banking License in India

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Palak Shah at the Business Standard :

“US micro hedge fund legend George Soros and the world’s third biggest philanthropist George Kaiser are in the race to acquire close to 4 per cent in the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), Asia’s oldest stock exchange.

Soros has bid for the BSE stake, held by the embattled Dubai Financial Group LLC, through Soros Fund Management LLC, and Kaiser has done so through private equity fund, Argonaut.

Other investors who have bid for BSE stake include New York-based private equity majors J C Flowers and Caldwell Investment, promoted by Toronto investment broker Thomas Caldwell. Caldwell is a specialist investor in stock exchanges and bought 4.3 million shares of the New York Stock Exchange in 2006. Sources added that a private equity fund has bid Rs 370 for each share, valuing BSE at over Rs 3,800 crore. Avendus Capital is advisor to the deal.

Dubai Financial, part of sovereign fund Dubai Holding, holds 3.92 per cent stake in BSE, which it bought when the exchange was demutualised in 2007. BSE was then valued at Rs 3,780 crore. While BSE and Avendus could not be reached for comment, sources familiar with the developments said Dubai Financial felt the exchange deserved a higher valuation in the current situation.

In the recent past, the valuation of the exchange saw a sudden spurt after a new management team took over in 2009.

While some stock brokers sold BSE shares at around Rs 180 a piece some six months ago, a bank auctioned 0.27 million shares at Rs 320 a couple of months ago.

Under the new management, BSE changed its derivative trading cycle to compete with the National Stock Exchange, launched a mutual fund trading platform and is upgrading its technology platform. BSE currently has a near 28 per cent share of the equity spot market in the country and has been making efforts to develop its derivative trading segment, where National Stock Exchange is a monopoly player. BSE will launch currency derivatives in May and is also in the process of increasing its stake in Central Depository Services Ltd to 51 per cent.

Currently, six foreign investors hold 25.65 per cent of BSE and five Indian institutions hold 12 per cent.

A little under 62 per cent of BSE’s shares are widely held. Among the key Indian shareholders are firms such as Bajaj Holdings and Investment, which owns 2.94 per cent, Infosys Technologies CEO and MD S. Gopalakrishnan, who owns 1.04 per cent and media major Bennett, Coleman and Co, which owns 1.04 per cent.

BSE recently announced 12 bonus shares for every share held and the exchange currently has around Rs 2,000 crore of cash reserves, which translates into cash per share of at least Rs 190.

BSE posted a net profit of Rs 55.42 crore on revenue of Rs119.21 crore for the quarter ended December 2009.”

The launching of the mutual fund platform and the upgrading of the technology and expansion of derivative trading is exactly what Goldman Sachs introduced into the New York Stock Exchange in the 1990s. And we saw what happened in the 15 years following. And Goldman is in India, currently seeking a commercial banking license to operate there.

With the same players around (Soros, Goldman Sachs etc. ), there’s no reason to believe that what’s coming up for the Bombay Stock Exchange won’t take the same direction. Before the financial crisis, the Indians had little exposure to the highly levered derivatives and toxic debt that blew up the system elsewhere. Let’s see whether this upcoming round they’ll be as lucky. With economies stagnant elsewhere, Asia and some select African countries are the only places where there’s actual economic growth occurring.

I’m afraid the same handful of corrupt players will game the system there…

More here at The Economic Times:

“His hedge fund Quantum, which was reported to have posted earnings of over 30% last year, went on a buying- spree at a time, when most funds were dumping stocks in a sliding market. On July 4, Quantum Fund bought a 3.8% equity in Jain Irrigation Systems, and close to 1% of the holding of Jai Corp for a value consideration of Rs 167 crore. Since February, the fund has made investments valued at close to Rs 600 crore, or $ 140 million, in various companies, including Indiabulls Financial Services, Indiabulls Real Estate and Kalindee Rail Nirman. Quantum’s selective stock picking comes at a time, when institutional investors have been pulling out a large chunk of money amid concerns over a combination of factors such as weak global markets, soaring global oil prices and spiraling inflation in India. “Hedge funds normally are active, when there is some momentum in the market. Quantum may be trying to do some value-buying, but one has to see how long the fund stays invested, given the prevailing uncertain market conditions,” said a stock-broker..”

Remember Formula K (or, the First Law of Kleptocracy) :

s(B) + s(G) + s(S) v. EE where ‘s’ is always a positive integer

Some (s) of the big banks (B – eg. JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citi etc.)

+

Some parts of government (G – eg. parts of the SEC/Treasury/Fed Reserve Chairman, IMF, World Bank etc.)

+

Some hedge-funds and speculators (S – eg. Soros, Paulson (?), Loeb, Cohen and others reportedly involved in manipulation and collusion with government)

Versus

Every one else (EE)