Indian growth tops expectations + Key Facts

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6971817.stm Last Updated: Friday, 31 August 2007, 09:08 GMT 10:08 UK

India is the world's second fastest growing major economy

India's economy is growing faster than expected, according to official data, on the back of steady farm growth and strong manufacturing and services.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew 9.3% in the April to June quarter from its level a year earlier.

The figure, from the Ministry of Statistics, had been expected to fall to 8.9% from the 9.1% recorded in the quarter between January and March.

The central bank expects growth of 8.5% for the whole of this year.

Growth picture

"It is slightly higher than expected partly because of higher farm growth and services. Every sector is growing," said Saumitra Chaudhuri, economic adviser at ICRA in Delhi.

Some analysts see the faster growth creating a risk of another rise in interest rates, but Friday's inflation figures appear to make that less likely.

Wholesale price inflation was 3.94% in the 12 months to 18 August, which is the first time that the weekly figure has fallen below 4% since April 2006.

The central bank raised interest rates five times between June 2006 and March 2007.

Behind China, India is the world's second fastest growing major economy.

+ Key facts: India rising

With more than one billion people, India is the world's second most populous country and its largest democracy.

The majority of people live in rural areas and millions face extreme poverty. But urbanisation is gathering pace and the economy is growing rapidly.

The country Population Culture

Economy Living standards

THE COUNTRY

Covering more than 3.1m sq km, or 1.2m sq miles (excluding Indian-administered Kashmir), India is among the world's biggest countries.

India is South Asia's largest country

It is also one of the most diverse. Apart from Hindi and English, there are 16 official languages. Major religions include Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism.

India was ruled by the British from the early 19th Century until 1947. It won its independence at the same time as partition and the creation of Pakistan. The two countries have since fought three wars - two of which were over the territory of Kashmir.

The country is now in a process of rapid economic development, but it faces complex and enduring internal problems, such as those around the caste system. India's massive overpopulation, poverty and environmental problems, as well as widespread corruption, are major challenges.

It is currently governed by a coalition government led by the Congress Party under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who came to power in 2004.

THE ECONOMY

India has become a world economic power, with growth over the past three years averaging 8% - a rate approaching that of its booming neighbour, China. Based on purchasing power parity, it is now the world's fourth largest economy.

Since India began to open up to the outside world in the late 1980s, it has become increasingly attractive to foreign investors. Its low costs and huge, English-speaking, workforce have made it popular with multinationals for work including manufacturing and call centres.

The success of hi-tech industries in particular has seen large numbers of overseas Indians return, in what has been described as a "brain gain". They are part of growing middle class, which is seen as a potentially vast domestic market.

Critics say the benefits of this growth have not reached the poor quickly enough, with millions remaining in abject poverty. Income per head is just US$720 (£365) a year.

Bureaucratic red tape and infrastructure problems are continuing issues.

POPULATION

India is expected to overtake China to become the world's most populous country within the next 25 years.

Its population has grown from 357 million in 1950, to 1.1 billion today. By 2030 it is expected to be home to 1.6 billion people, compared with China's 1.4 billion.

Much of the population growth is down to India's high birth rate, but life expectancy is also increasing.

In 2000, a minority of the population was over 60, but by 2050 retired people will form a significant part of society. This raises questions about how they will be supported, as fewer than 10% have pensions.

More than 65% of people live in rural areas, but migration to the cities is accelerating.

LIVING STANDARDS

Despite its burgeoning economy, the gap between rich and poor in India is vast.

WEALTH DISTRIBUTION IN INDIA Top 1%: 16% of wealth Top 5%: 38% of wealth Top 10%: 53% of wealth Bottom 80%: 30% of wealth Bottom 50%: 8% of wealth Bottom 20%: 1% of wealth Bottom 10% 0.2% of wealth Source: University of Western Ontario, 2006

About 35% of people live on less than US$1 a day. Poverty is at its worst in rural areas and is often accompanied by high levels of illiteracy and poor health.

Nationally, almost half of children suffer from malnourishment, although infant mortality rates have declined. Almost 60% of people in towns and 20% in rural areas do not have access to proper sanitation.

Despite such problems, India has seen overall poverty decline - a shift which has been accompanied by more general improvements to living standards.

Life expectancy rose from 59 to 63 between 1990 and 2004. Adult literacy rose from 50% to 61% over the same period.

It is suggested that continued economic growth will drive up living standards for the population as a whole.

CULTURE

India is a nation of prolific film watchers and makers.

About four billion trips are made to the cinema each year - many more than in any other country.

Bollywood and Big Brother star Shilpa Shetty

More than 900 movies are made a year - significantly more than the US. The majority of these come from Bollywood, the Bombay-based film industry which enjoys huge audiences across Asia and beyond.

The country's influence extends worldwide in many other areas. Acclaimed authors Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth and Salman Rushdie were all born in India.

It is often said that Indian food has replaced fish and chips as the UK's national dish and its sportsmen and women have achieved success in fields as diverse as cricket and hockey.

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Come Together and Create!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka:Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
C/S

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Making the Economic Case for Immigration Reform

http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=3668b6a6f25edd83745da5d5459cb640

Making the Economic Case for Immigration Reform

New America Media, News Report, Suzanne Manneh, Posted: Aug 24, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO — The future of the United States economy depends on immigrants, and this economic argument is precisely what the American public overlooked in the immigration debate. "We need to appeal to the larger base of voters about the economic power of the immigrant workforce," asserted pollster Sergio Bendixen of Bendixen & Associates, a public opinion research firm in Coral Gables, Fla. Speaking before journalists from the ethnic media, Bendixen outlined a new strategy for immigration reform at an Aug. 23 briefing organized by New America Media.

The immigration reform bill failed despite seemingly solid bipartisan support. The bill was backed by President George W. Bush, as well as Democrat majority leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. It was also strongly supported by institutions such as CBS, the New York Times, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and one of the nation's largest unions, the SEIU.

The bill failed, Bendixen said, in part because the 10 million Hispanic voters were outnumbered by the 25 million voters who were vehemently anti-immigrant. It will take until 2050 for the number of Hispanic voters to reach 25 million, according to Bendixen, "so becoming citizens and registering to vote is important, but it's not the answer." To pass immigration reform, he stressed, its supporters must win over the larger public by making an economic case for immigration, one that has been largely absent from the national discourse.

Without a continuing annual influx of 1 to 1.5 million immigrants, Bendixen argues, the United States will face a substantial shortage of unskilled workers in the next 10 years.

"We'll need 28 million unskilled workers that so many industries like hotels, construction companies, and agriculture industries rely on to keep them from falling apart," explained Bendixen. "Only 15 million of our population will fill these positions, so we'll need 13 million immigrants to fill these slots." If the United States is unable to attract and retain these workers, he added, the economic implications are far-reaching, affecting everything from the price of a head of lettuce to the ability of hotels to keep their rooms clean after losing their housekeeping staff.

"Migrants may be the most important 'commodity' of the 21st Century," he said. The United States is already losing immigrants to countries like Spain, Italy and Portugal, and may soon be competing for these workers, Bendixen predicts. In the 1990s, for example, 85 percent of Ecuadorian immigrants came to the United States; by 2003, this percentage dropped to 38 percent.

Another factor that is often overlooked is the fact that fertility rates in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East are increasing, while that of the United States is decreasing. The U.S. fertility rate, currently 1.9, must be at least 2.1 to maintain the current work force, according to Bendixen.

With anti-immigrant sentiment on the rise, especially in the Midwest and the South, some view immigrants as criminals, and a threat to American cultural identity. Much of this, Bendixen suggests, can be attributed to the negative, anti-immigrant, and racist media coverage, from Lou Dobbs on CNN to Bill O'Reilly on FOX News.

Racism against immigrants is palpable, says Bendixen, who received an email from a man who wrote, "We should build a divide along the Mexican border, and stop their invasion. I don't care if the Mexicans pile up like tumbleweeds in the Santa Ana winds."

Evelyn Sanchez, executive director of the Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition, added that she received an email from a woman who compared undocumented immigrants to murderers. "She said, 'We're getting told to pardon undocumented immigrants, so should we start to pardon murderers now, too?' People are in fear. They fear that the immigrants are coming and they can't sustain their families, and misdirect their fears through such acts."

These sentiments have a direct effect on the daily lives of immigrants. "It's a relief to see my mom come home from work at night and know she didn't get deported," recounted panelist Adrian Ramirez, an activist and writer for Silicon Valley De-Bug. "To us it's not about numbers; we keep getting promised thing after thing after thing, and we get let down. We just want anything to happen," he said. Immigrants don't want anything to be given to them, he added. "I want to earn it as much as anyone else."

The anti-immigration ordinance that originated in Hazleton, Penn., barring undocumented immigrants from access to housing and employment – and the multiple "copy-cat" ordinances that it has generated across the country – demonstrates what can happen when anti-immigrant sentiment is converted into legislation, explained panelist Lucas Guttentag of the ACLU Immigrant Rights Project.

One of the most critical actions, Guttentag said, is the "no-match" initiative, whereby the Social Security Administration (SSA) informs employers of a mismatch, or inconsistency, between their employee names and the social security numbers in the SSA database. The Social Security Administration is now forcing employers to terminate employees who have mismatched numbers, and are presumed undocumented. A state law adhering to this model has been signed by the governor if Arizona.

"All of these ordinances, acts, initiatives, have the same goal, and that is to drive people out of jobs, out of society, and out of the country," asserted Guttentag.

The most effective response to anti-immigrant forces, according to Bendixen, is the argument that immigrants are a necessity for the country's economic future. "The undocumented workers are here to work," Bendixen said. "They have to work, they are desperate, and there is no one else to do the job."


Related Stories:

Download Sergio Bendixen's Presentation (PPT)

Mexicans Send Less Cash Home, Bad News For All

Poll Says Immigrants Would Heed Bill

NAM Poll of Undocumented Provokes Criticism and Praise Report Ethnic Media

Sergio Bendixen of Bendixen and Associates with Maria Cardona of Dewey Square Grou

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Come Together and Create!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka:Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
C/S

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Options on the table: By Noam Chomsky

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18263.htm

08/27/07 "Khaleej Times" -- - In Washington a remarkable and ominous campaign is under way to "contain Iran," which turns out to mean "containing Iranian influence," in a confrontation that Washington Post correspondent Robin Wright calls "Cold War II." The sequel bears close scrutiny as it unfolds under the direction of former Kremlinologists Condoleezza Rice and Robert M Gates, according to Wright. Stalin had imposed an Iron Curtain to bar Western influence; Bush-Rice-Gates are imposing a Green Curtain to bar Iranian influence. Washington's concerns are understandable. In Iraq, Iranian support is welcomed by much of the majority Shia population. In Afghanistan, President Karzai describes Iran as "a helper and a solution." In Palestine, Iranian-backed Hamas won a free election, eliciting savage punishment of the Palestinian population by the United States and Israel for voting "the wrong way." In Lebanon, most Lebanese see Iranian-backed Hezbollah "as a legitimate force defending their country from Israel," Wright reports. And the Bush administration, without irony, charges that Iran is "meddling" in Iraq, otherwise presumably free from foreign interference. The ensuing debate is partly technical. Do the serial numbers on the Improvised Explosive Devices really trace back to Iran? If so, does the leadership of Iran know about the IEDs, or only the Iranian Revolutionary Guards? Settling the debate, the White House plans to brand the Revolutionary Guards as a "specially designated global terrorist" force, an unprecedented action against a national military branch, authorising Washington to undertake a wide range of punitive actions. The sabre-rattling rhetoric about "containing Iran" has escalated to the point where both political parties and practically the whole US Press corps accept it as legitimate and, in fact, honourable, that "all options are on the table," to quote the leading presidential candidates — possibly even nuclear weapons. "All options on the table" means that Washington is threatening war. The UN Charter outlaws "the threat or use of force." The United States, which has chosen to become an outlaw state, disregards international laws and norms. We're allowed to threaten anybody we want — and to attack anybody we want. Cold War II also entails an arms race. The United States is proposing a $ 20 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, while increasing annual military aid to Israel by 30 per cent, to $ 30 billion over 10 years. Egypt is down for a $ 14 billion, 10-year deal. The aim is to counter "what everyone in the region believes is a flexing of muscles by a more aggressive Iran," says an unnamed senior US government official. Iran's "aggression" consists in its being welcomed within the region, and allegedly supporting resistance to US forces in neighbouring Iraq. Unquestionably, Iran's government is reprehensible. The prospect that Iran might develop nuclear weapons is deeply troubling. Though Iran has every right to develop nuclear energy, no one — including the majority of Iranians — wants it to have nuclear weapons. That would add to the much more serious dangers presented by its near neighbours Pakistan, India and Israel, all nuclear-armed with the blessing of the United States. Iran resists US or Israeli domination of the Middle East but scarcely poses a military threat. Any potential threat to Israel might be overcome if the United States would accept the view of the great majority of its own citizens and of Iranians and permit the Middle East to become a nuclear-weapons free zone, including Iran and Israel, and US forces deployed there. One may also remember that UN Security Council Resolution 687, of 1991, to which Washington appeals when convenient, calls for "establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery." Washington's feverish new Cold War "containment" policy has spread even to Europe. The United States wants to install a "missile defence system" in the Czech Republic and Poland that is being marketed to Europe as a shield against Iranian missiles. Even if Iran had nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, the chances of its using them to attack Europe are perhaps on a par with the chances of Europe's being hit by an asteroid. In any case, if Iran were to indicate the slightest intention of aiming a missile at Europe or Israel, the country would be vaporised. Of course Vladimir Putin is deeply upset by the shield proposal. We can imagine how the United States would respond if a Russian anti-missile system were erected in Canada. The Russians have every reason to regard an anti-missile system as part of a first-strike weapon against them. As is well known, such a system could never impede a first strike, but it could conceivably impede a retaliatory strike. On all sides, "missile defense" is therefore understood to be a first-strike weapon, eliminating a deterrent to attack. Even more obviously, the only military function of such a system with regard to Iran, the declared aim, would be to bar an Iranian deterrent to US or Israel aggression. The shield, then, ratchets the threat of war a few notches higher, in the Middle East and elsewhere, with incalculable consequences, and the potential for a terminal nuclear war. The immediate fear is that by accident or design, Washington's war planners or their Israeli surrogate might decide to escalate their Cold War II into a hot one. There are many nonmilitary measures to "contain" Iran, including a de-escalation of rhetoric and hysteria all around, and agreeing to negotiations in earnest for the first time — if indeed all options are on the table. Copyright © 2007 Khaleej Times Click on "comments" below to read or post comments Comments (21) Comment (0) Comment Guidelines Be succinct, constructive and relevant to the story. We encourage engaging, diverse and meaningful commentary. Do not include personal information such as names, addresses, phone numbers and emails. Comments falling outside our guidelines – those including personal attacks and profanity – are not permitted. See our complete Comment Policy and use this link to notify us if you have concerns about a comment. We'll promptly review and remove any inappropriate postings. Send Page To a Friend In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information ClearingHouse endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)