Tag: India

Wacky Proposal for a Rice Cartel

Sometimes there are stories which are so self-refuting that it’s hard to provide further commentary. Such is the announcement that China, India, Pakistan, Thailand and Vietnam are investigating ways to cartelize world rice markets. They want to do for rice what OPEC has done for oil.

Rice prices have been in free fall since 1997, losing more than a third of their value in just 5 years. World projections show rice production continuing to increase, so the price of rice is likely to fall even further over the next few years while global consumption is projected to decline.

Under those conditions a cartel is a great idea for producers, but how do they ever expect to enforce cartel agreements? OPEC has had a nightmare enforcing its cartel agreements on oil which is a relatively easy commodity to track and exclude potential competitors (not to mention monitor violators). Since rice can be grown throughout most of the world, there is almost no way cartel efforts can succeed.

Ironically, each of the governments involved has had disastrous experience with state subsidies and internal control of food markets. Apparently they believe that if they simply try the same failed policies on a bigger scale that they might finally work. Don’t bet on it.

Source:

Rice producers in ‘cartel’ talks. The BBC, October 9, 2002.

Indian Agency Campaigns Against Child Marriages

The BBC reported this month that India’s National Commission for Women is trying to highlight he issue of child marriages in that country.

Thousands of children, including some infants, are married on Akha Teej, which is considered one of the most auspicious days in some Hindu communities. Despite official laws making it illegal for boys under 21 and girls under 18 from being married, child marriage is still widespread in some parts of India, especially in the rural areas of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal.

In 1998 The New York Times reported on a survey that interviewed 5,000 married women in Rajasthan and found 56 percent had married before the age of 15.

According to legend, the practice of child marriage began to protect girls against rape from Muslim invaders. The Muslim invaders would take any unmarried women, so Hindus responded by marrying their children at very early ages.

Today, the practice continues in part out of fear that girls not married by the time they reach puberty will fall prey to sexual licentiousness and in part as a means of creating an elaborate social network among people who are extremely poor and where the right arranged marriage can mean the difference between survival and starvation if there is unexpected flooding or drought.

Source:

Child Marriages, Though Illegal, Persist in India. John F. Burns, The New York Times, May 11, 1998.

Move to stop Indian child marriages. Jyotsna Singh, The BBC, May 14, 2002.

Cases of HIV in India Could Surpass South Africa

While per capita HIV infection rates in India will likely never reach the levels found in South Africa, India is well on its way to surpassing South Africa’s tally of total AIDS cases.

Currently, the infection rate in India is estimated at only 0.7 percent. But with a population topping a billion people, that translates to 3.8 million adult cases in India compared to South Africa’s 4.7 million cases.

Even with the relatively low infection rate, this is an enormous number of cases that will strain the ability of India’s health care system to respond.

As in Africa, a mixture of denial and lack of openness about the disease has helped it spread. In some areas, such as the western state of Maharashta, as much as 2 percent of the adult population is HIV positive. That may not compare to South Africa’s 20 percent infection rate, but is high compared to a country such as the United States where HIV prevalence is only 0.61 percent (and where the prevalence is due in part to the long survival times of HIV positive individuals thanks to expensive drug regimens).

Source:

Indian HIV ‘could pass South Africa’. The BBC, May 2, 2002.

Deadly Setback in Polio Immunization Efforts

As this site has mentioned before, efforts are under way to eradicate polio through intensive immunization efforts in much the same way that small pox was eradicated. That effort took a horrific turn in India where 500 children fell ill and at least nine died after a mass polio immunization campaign.

On Sunday, November 11, thousands of children throughout India were vaccinated against polio. Within 24 hours hundreds of children in the Indian state of Assam were taken to local hospitals and health officials report that nine children had died — all from the same village.

The BBC quoted non-governmental agencies as suggesting that the vaccines used in Assam may have been outdated. Regardless, clearly this is likely to be a setback to efforts to eradicate polio.

Source:

Deaths follow Indian polio campaign. Subir Bhaumik, The BBC, November 12, 2001.

It’s Just Not a Good Year for Nepal’s Royal Family

Back on June 1, Crown Prince Dipendra went on a shooting spree that killed nine members of Nepal’s royal family, including the king and queen. Now the BBC reports that Princess Prekshya and 5 non-royals died in a helicopter accident. Prekshya had been married to Prince Dhirendra, who was among those killed in the June 1 massacre. Add to that the amazingly successful Maoist insurgency in Nepal, and suddenly it doesn’t look so good to be the king after all.

China Leads World in Imprisoning Journalists

A new report by the Committe to Protect Journalists says that China leads the world in imprisoning journalists. China accounted for 22 of the 87 journalists imprisoned worldwide.

The CPJ report noted that China seems to have hardened its stance against journalists over the past couple years, likely in response to the chaos created by rapid Internet adoption.

In previous years, the Chinese government made concessions to international public opinion by carefully stage-managing the release of prominent dissidents, including journalists, at critical moments. Authorities took a harder line in 2000, when not a single journalist was released.

Other countries which had jailed journalists as of December 2000 were,

Country

Imprisoned
Journalists
Algeria
2
Burma
8
Central African Republic
1
China
22
Comoros
1
Cuba
3
Democratic Republic of Congo
4
Egypt
1
Ethiopia
7
Iran
6
Kuwait
2
Nepal
1
Niger
1
Syria
1
Tunisia
2
Turkey
14
Uzbekistan
3
Vietnam
2

The number of imprisoned journalists has fallen dramatically since 1998, when 118 journalists were imprisoned, but these numbers do underestimate the problem since they only count journalists who were still in prison at the end of 2000. A much larger number of journalists were imprisoned for at least part of 2000 but released before the end of the year.

Of course arrest isn’t the only way of intimidating journalists. Last year 24 journalists were killed around the world either in the act of reporting on a story or in retaliation because of their reporting or affiliation with a news organization. The murder of journalists breaks down like this,

Country

Journalists
Killed

Bangladesh
 2
Brazil
 1
Colombia
 3
Guatemala
 1
Haiti
 1
India
 1
Mozambique
 1
Pakistan
 1
Philippines
 2
Russia
 3
Sierra Leone
 3
Somalia
 1
Spain
 1
Sri Lanka
 1
Ukraine
 1
Uruguay
 1

Additionally another 20 journalists were murdered worldwide, but the motive for those murders remains unclear.

Source:

Attack on the Press in 2000. Committee to Protect Journalists, 2000.

China: ‘Leading jailer’ of journalists. The BBC, March 19, 2001.