[Reader-list] reader-list Digest, Vol 1, Issue 369
Radhakrishnan
krishnanrr at rediffmail.com
Sun May 30 12:12:06 IST 2010
On Lobbying
It was indeed an interesting and insightful article.
Given the present environment someone should also explore the possibility of unraveling the ugly nexus between the so called civil society activists and the state. Interesting it is an replication of power elite with most of these actors coming from the upper strata of the society, having organic links with the bureaucracy, media and academic institutions which also facilitates them to get into the category of "eminent people" .
some people are able to benefit by membership in the govt run committees and also run their NGOs,defend the govt's role while decrying the same actions committed in the opposition rules states, whilst some people working in the interiors have to run from pillar to post for clearing their files....
Radhakrishnan
On Mon, 24 May 2010 14:29:12 +0530 wrote
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Today's Topics:
1. "The lobbying menace" (in India) (Patrice Riemens)
2. Re: Everybody loves a bad fatwa (TaraPrakash)
3. Server Shift (Monica Narula)
4. GurgaonWorkersNews - Newsletter 26 (May 2010)
(gurgaon workers news)
5. UK to Kill off National ID Card Program (Bipin Trivedi)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 20 May 2010 19:28:00 +0200
From: "Patrice Riemens"
Subject: [Reader-list] "The lobbying menace" (in India)
To: reader-list at sarai.net
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
bwo Eveline Lubbers
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=239643
The lobbying menace
The News
Monday, May 17, 2010
By Praful Bidwai
Corporate lobbyists have become a menace to democracy in India. Recent
developments, including the release of the intercepts of a telephone
conversation between a member of parliament and a well-known lobbyist
(Nira Radia), and media stories on the growing power of the
lobbyist-politician-policymaker nexus, should concern all conscientious
citizens.
The tapped telephone conversation shows that Radia was pivotal in
getting A Raja, a Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MP, a cabinet rank and the
telecommunications portfolio in the second United Progressive Alliance
government. Radia also weighed in to tilt the balance in the DMK´s
internal power struggle in favour of one faction.
The lobbyists´ clout extends to the point of influencing the choice of
cabinet ministers, nominating key bureaucrats and interfering in
political party affairs. They increasingly formulate economic and
industrial policies at the nuts-and-bolts level.
Lobbyists are important mediators - and sometimes active players - in
business-government relations. This would have been unthinkable only
years ago.
Major areas of lobbyist influence are the infrastructure (highways,
ports and huge projects under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban
Renewal Mission in 63 cities); energy (including gas, oil and
electricity); telecom (where current 3G auction bids show that the
earlier 2G spectrum was sold at a fraction of the market price); and
mining (where global conglomerates have developed billion-dollar stakes
in India´s tribal heartland).
Lobbyists also wield considerable clout in military contracts,
agribusiness, civil aviation, and in opening up retail trade to
organised business, including multinational hypermarket chains like
Metro, Carrefour and Wal-Mart.
The lobbying industry has over 30 major firms based in New Delhi alone,
some of which have diversified from public relations. Each firm appoints
dozens of "facilitators", "account executives" and lawyers to secure
sweetheart deals and licences for their clients and ensure that their
clients´ rivals don´t get them. In addition, there are individual
entrepreneur-lobbyists like MPs Amar Singh and NK Singh, who work for
different clients.
Corporate lobbying has become the highest embodiment of crony capitalism
in India. Unlike advertising agencies, which offer certain services to
anyone for a fee, lobbying companies are intimately allied with specific
business groups in political ways. Since they have access to business
secrets, including malpractices, their loyalty to individual industry
magnates is all-important.
Common to them are all the slick techniques and skills that successful,
if unscrupulous, lobbying requires, including ability to cherry-pick
facts that suit/favour the client; make attractive PowerPoint
presentations that suggest familiarity with the subject; determination
not to be fazed by hostile interactions; and knowledge of which keywords
to use and which buttons to press.
What matters above all is the ability to do social networking, spend
lavishly, throw dazzling parties and please industrial magnates,
politicians and key bureaucrats by finding out their strengths and
weaknesses and shamelessly exploiting them to the point of blackmail.
Lobbyists are typically flamboyant, high-profile, even exhibitionist.
In some cases, lobbyists´ success in swinging spectacular deals for
major clients (e.g. Coca-Cola) depends on personal proximity to key
bureaucrats and ministers. Right since the early 1990s, when AN Verma
was the principal secretary to Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, bureaucrats
and politicians like civil aviation minister Praful Patel have played a
special role in dispensing favours to businessmen.
Other lobbyists´ reach and influence derive from the numbers on their
payroll -business journalists, TV anchors, law firms (to deliver subtle
threats), personal assistants to middle-level bureaucrats all the way to
top ministers, and income-tax officials (to coerce and cajole
decision-makers).
Some TV anchors were implicated in lobbying for high berths in UPA-2 for
certain MPs. Corporate lobbyists assiduously cultivate the media, which
duly returns the favour.
Some of India´s biggest corporate conglomerates plant loyalists in the
headquarters of the top papers, TV channels and news agencies. Their
personnel know - typically before the news editor - which stories will
appear which might affect their interests or their rivals´. Like the
mafia, they have inconvenient or "hostile" stories killed and favourable
ones played up. If all else fails, they threaten to withdraw advertising
support.
The reach of corporate lobbyists, their political influence, financial
power and fervour have acquired menacing dimensions during the past
decade or so. There were lobbyists earlier, of course - from individual
influence-peddlers like SK Patil and Rajni Patel in the 1960s and 1970s,
to the organised "liaison agents" of the 1980s who hung around the
industry and defence ministries´ offices.
But the lobbying business didn´t have an organised character, a sharp
enough focus, concentration of high-level manpower, and even
one-hundredth of the ability to secure shady deals.
Precisely because India is energetically globalising and pursuing
neoliberal policies, Big Business today has an incomparably bigger stake
than before in securing windfall contracts for highway, airport and
flyover construction and special economic zones; in privatising natural
resources and obtaining leases on land, water, minerals and forests; and
in rigging the capital markets.
Other stakes include opening up foreign air travel routes to private
airlines; helping multinational corporations to penetrate retail trade;
and taking over city bus transportation at assured super-profits.
Corporates are now invading the public sphere so that food grains can be
diverted to alcohol production, and pricey, artificially flavoured
biscuits can displace wholesome, nutritious, freshly cooked food in
mid-day meal schemes for schoolchildren. So much for the much-vaunted
"free market"!
Such blatant manipulation of the entire policy-making apparatus dwarfs
the old-style "licence-permit Raj"- always exaggerated for its
supposedly debilitating impact on the economy, and forever deftly
manipulated by business groups. Then, the bureaucrat had to be
influenced and induced to open up a partially-closed system. Now, the
bureaucrat is an already-willing ally of Big Business. The contest is
over who will secure the favour first to keep the rival out.
Secondly, lobbying is about recruiting as many retired top-ranking
public servants as possible so they can influence their former
colleagues and juniors on their clients´ behalf. Thus, private oil, gas
and electricity companies, steel producers, telecom corporations and
airlines have all recruited retired bureaucrats or public sector executives.
This pernicious practice should be banned and punished. No retiree
should be allowed to accept any position in a related company for ten years.
Another characteristic of the new-generation corporate lobbyists is
their strong global connections. They work closely with organisations
like the US-India Business Council and major Washington lobbying firms
Patton Boggs and Burson-Marsteller. The US-India nuclear deal would
probably not have gone through US Congress without the USIBC, Patton
Boggs and the American-Israeli Political Action Council.
Corporate lobbying is far more insidious and collusive than the
politician-criminal nexus. It´s also much more damaging at the national
level.
Lobbyists exert the most pernicious conceivable influence on
policy-making and corrupt the process of democracy. They introduce
irrational and extraneous elements in decision-making and subvert the
public interest. They add uniquely to sleaze, venality, cynicism and
corruption in the polity.
India´s political class acknowledged in the 1980s the corrosive role of
lobbyists in military contracts and altogether banned middlemen from
defence purchase negotiations. But now it has succumbed to that very
influence on a greater scale - not just in military contracts, but in
every sphere.
Unless this toxic influence is removed, and lobbying outlawed and
punished, it will undermine and hollow democracy, India´s most precious
possession. Democracy must be defended against business manipulation.
The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and peace and
human-rights activist based in Delhi. Email: prafulbidwai1 at yahoo.co.in
_______________________________________________
lobbycracy mailing list
lobbycracy at www14.antenna.nl
http://www14.antenna.nl/mailman/listinfo/lobbycracy
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Thu, 20 May 2010 13:38:55 -0400
From: "TaraPrakash"
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Everybody loves a bad fatwa
To: "Javed" ,"sarai list"
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="utf-8";
reply-type=original
Thanks for bringing this to our notice that media suddenly has become such
as described in this mail. They were always hungry for news and added
sounbites, as many as possible. I wonder if anyone has sympathy for the
mortified self of the writer.
The author clarifies the language of the fatva, which makes the fatva more
deplorable.
"It is
unlawful for Muslim women to do job in government or private
institutions where men and women work together and women have to talk
with [to] men frankly and without veil." Now which law are they talking
about? Shouldn't they specify? The language suggested to me that law of the
land prohibits Muslim women from going to the government or private offices
without veil. Looks like if because of a disability a muslim woman couldn't
speak (frankly or otherwise) it is lawful to work in those offices as long
as you covered yourself.
And what happens to the question of salary, which the fatva ignored? You can
earn salary even without going to the office. There are internet based jobs
that you can perform from home to remain in the despicable shackles of a
medieval "law." Does the fatva ignore the question because the answer goes
without saying? If it is haram she should not be able to keep it and the
male member of the family is justified to gobble it up. If it is halal, then
it should be gobbled up by the family. The woman has no individual
existence.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Javed"
To: "sarai list"
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 11:01 AM
Subject: [Reader-list] Everybody loves a bad fatwa
> Everybody loves a bad fatwa
>
> Within 24 hours of this news being flashed on NDTV this week, all
> major media of India have reported this over a month old fatwa. And
> every new report had added information that was not even there, says
> KASHIF-UL-HUDA. Pix: the Deoband seminary.
>
> Posted Thursday, May 13 23:11:03, 2010
>
> Everybody loves a bad fatwa. And why not? Newspapers, for it fills the
> front page for its readers; Television channels, for it brings in the
> audience; communalists, for it plays into the image of Muslims as
> backwards; and activists, because it gives them a chance to reinforce
> their secular credentials. Never mind that this fatwa will not change
> the lives of millions of Muslims and may be text of the fatwa is not
> what it has been reported or may be the said fatwa doesn't even exist.
>
> A fatwa is nothing but a religious opinion from a religious scholar to
> a question asked by a Muslim on a particular situation that he or she
> may be facing or might face in future, and does not know what should
> be appropriate way to act in light of Islamic teachings. A mufti then
> issues a fatwa or opinion based on his understanding of the question
> and Islam. Just as different medical doctors will have difference of
> opinion regarding diagnosis and a treatment plan, it is common for
> different muftis to give different opinions on the same question.
>
> Media circus
>
> At least once every year, on a slow news day, some enterprising
> journalist finds a fatwa that will fit the stereotype about Muslims
> being backward or Muslim scholars being ignorant or out of touch with
> the real world or both, and publish a news story based upon this
> 'prized' fatwa. Let's take the example of the fatwa issued by Darul
> Uloom Deoband that is making the round in news cycles this week.
>
> The fatwa in question was issued more than a month ago and one can
> ask, why the sudden interest by media in this particular fatwa? A
> fatwa that is only a sentence long has had numerous newspaper columns
> space and hours of airtime devoted to it. The media bosses have
> decided that it is an important fatwa because it has all the right
> keywords to keep the readers, audience, and therefore revenue coming
> in.
>
> One has to question the motive of the major media regarding this
> fatwa. There is more to this than meets the eye when the Indian media
> which is obsessed with breaking news and exclusives these days picks
> up a fatwa that was issued more than a month ago. Within 24 hours of
> this news being flashed on NDTV on Tuesday (May 11th, 2010) this week,
> all major media of India have reported it. And every new report had
> added information that was not even there.
>
> Let's look at the fatwa first.
>
>
> Question number 21031
> (http://darulifta-deoband.org/viewfatwa.jsp?ID=21031) to Darul Ifta
> (house of fatwas) of Darul Uloom Deoband asked by someone in India
> states: “Asalamu-Alikum: Can muslim women in India do Govt. or Pvt.
> Jobs? Shall their salary be Halal or Haram or Prohibited?” Answer
> published on April 4th, 2010 simply answers it as follow: “It is
> unlawful for Muslim women to do job in government or private
> institutions where men and women work together and women have to talk
> with [to] men frankly and without veil.”
>
>
> Headlines
>
> Now let's look at some of the headlines of news reports about this fatwa:
>
> Fatwa against working Muslim women: NDTV
>
> Fatwa to working Muslim women: Don't talk to male colleagues: NDTV
>
> Women's earnings haram, says Deoband: Times of India [Print edition]
>
> Deoband fatwa: It's illegal for women to work, support family: Times
> of India [Online]
>
> Don't talk to male colleagues: Darul Uloom's fatwa to all working women:
> DNA
>
> Muslim women can't work: Deoband: Samay Live
>
> Darul Uloom says Muslim women can't work in public: India Today
>
> Now, fatwa against working women: Indian Express
>
> Women Working with Men Un-Islamic: Deoband: Outlook
>
> Fatwa against men-women proximity at workplace: Zee News
>
> In case you ever wondered why there is no successful supermarket
> tabloid in India, this is your answer. There is no need for one
> because major media in India does that job very well.
> _________________________________________
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------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Sat, 22 May 2010 14:52:28 +0530
From: Monica Narula
Subject: [Reader-list] Server Shift
To: sarai list
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
Dear All,
A quick note regarding list maintenance. All Sarai mailing lists are
being shifted to new, upgraded servers on Friday May 28th at 7pm IST.
This will take about 12-13 hours. During this time, the list will be
unavailable.
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------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Sun, 23 May 2010 05:23:53 +0000 (GMT)
From: gurgaon workers news
Subject: [Reader-list] GurgaonWorkersNews - Newsletter 26 (May 2010)
To: gurgaon_workers_news at yahoo.co.uk
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes
GurgaonWorkersNews - Newsletter 26 (May 2010)
(full version: www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com)
Gurgaon in Haryana is presented as the shining India, a symbol of
capitalist success promising a better life for everyone behind the
gateway of development. At a first glance the office towers and
shopping malls reflect this chimera and even the facades of the
garment factories look like three star hotels. Behind the facade,
behind the factory walls and in the side streets of the industrial
areas thousands of workers keep the rat-race going, producing cars and
scooters for the middle-classes which end up in the traffic jam on the
new highway between Delhi and Gurgaon. Thousands of young middle class
people lose time, energy and academic aspirations on night-shifts in
call centres, selling loan schemes to working-class people in the US
or pre-paid electricity schemes to the poor in the UK. Next door,
thousands of rural-migrant workers uprooted by the agrarian crisis
stitch and sew for export, competing with their angry brothers and
sisters in Bangladesh
or Vietnam. And the rat-race will not stop; on the outskirts of
Gurgaon, Asia's biggest Special Economic Zone is in the making. The
following newsletter documents some of the developments in and around
this miserable boom region. If you want to know more about working and
struggling in Gurgaon, if you want more info about or even contribute
to this project, please do so via:
www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com
gurgaon_workers_news at yahoo.co.uk
In the May 2010 issue you can find:
1) Proletarian Experiences -
Daily life stories and reports from a workers' perspective
*** Three Communists in Gurgaon / Interviews for an Open Debate -
The industrial development and proletarian unrest in Gurgaon did not
remain unnoticed. We talked to three communists who decided to focus
their political activity on the vast landscape of working class
formation. The comrades are part of the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist
left, belonging to three different political organisations.
*** Service?! What the hell! / Reports from Service Proletarians,
Street Labour Markets and Factory Workers in Gurgaon -
Some voices of security guards and drivers, metal and textile workers.
Some voices from workers looking for a job at corner labour markets,
harassed by the police and other thugs.
2) Collective Action -
Reports on proletarian struggles in the area
*** Inflationary Proletarian Struggles -
While opposition parties arrange token protests against the price
hikes, workers on the ground battle for higher wages. In March 2010
Delhi government announced 33 per cent increase of minimum wages, but
this hike hardly ever reaches shop-floor reality. In the aftermaths of
the minimum wage increase we observe various spontaneous proletarian
actions in Gurgaon and Okhla industrial areas. The combination of an
interlinked (automobile) industry and organisational efforts like
Faridabad Majdoor Talmel can become future lines of coordination and
generalisation of the unrest.
*** Update on Struggles of Permanent Automobile Workers at Sanden
Vikas and Exide -
The first-tier supplying industry of the automobile industry is
heating up under the double pressure of increasing demand of the
assembly plants on one side and the more confident claims of the
workforce on the other. The recent struggles at Denso, Sanden Vikas
and Exide express the difficult position of a young permanent work-
force: they appeal to the classical union form of struggle hoping to
secure an increasingly precarious position. These classical forms
detach them from the wider casual and temporary workforce and
therefore from the true 'material' power-base.
*** Waterwars, Energy Crunch and Revolting Villages -
Groundwater levels in Gurgaon drop dramatically, gobbled up by
industry and upper-middle class life-style. Water and energy flows are
diverted away from workers' and peasants' spheres. We document some
struggles of 'villagers' against the lack of resources and oil-pipe-
line projects crossing their fields.
3) According to Plan -
General information on the development of the region or on certain
company
policies
*** The Social Tsunami Impact / Snap-Shots against Capital-Class-
Crisis -
This is an attempt to introduce a regular update on general tendencies
of crisis development in Indian - motivated by Greek shock-waves,
naked shorts and potential spillovers. Apart from short glimpses on
the macro-level of things we focus on general trends in agriculture
and automobile sector: the current demise of the past and the toxicity
of the future.
4) About the Project -
Updates on Gurgaon Workers News
*** Glossary -
Updated version of the Glossary: things that you always wanted to
know, but could never be bothered to google. Now even in alphabetical
order.
News from the Special Exploitation Zone -
www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Mon, 24 May 2010 14:34:03 +0530
From: Bipin Trivedi
Subject: [Reader-list] UK to Kill off National ID Card Program
To: sarai-list
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Dear Taha,
UK government if comes back from the UID path than they are making mistake. Perhaps new government pole promises (for getting vote only) forced them to take such step. Anyway as far as India is concerned, she is highly terrorists affected state along with highly populated state, unlike UK where terrorism is negligible and no population explosion threat compared to India, so India needs such UID denomination to counter terrorism and handle large population systematically.
If you want to give vote to BJP for oppose this UID project than you are mistaken. Since this UID project idea was initiated by BJP/NDA only particularly to handle/counter illegal migration and terrorist infiltration. However they could not implement at that time since study was going on. I don’t think that BJP will oppose this scheme. My series of earlier mail if you will see that there is no communal agenda of BJP at all. Anti terrorist agenda if counted as communal agenda than there is different thing! What BJP did earlier is to counter vote bank politics of congress since year particularly appeasing minority unnecessarily and after came to power NDA had not taken any single step against any community. On the contrary other parties like congress, CPI and other regional parties proved communal in many occasions. For ex WB government allowed Bangladeshis migration is one type of communal and anti national step only.
You have posted OUTLOOK story. Please note that this is pilot project to know any drawback to implement it and can be rectify with this experience to put it in general. Fingerprint is the key criteria for this project and without that this project is of no use. High security zone, passport process, visa process you have to give fingerprint than what's the reason to oppose this. Since, now India become highly security zone considering terrorist threat.
I don’t understand why you people afraid of leaking of data. Have you heard any leakage from Passport office or RTO or Ration card or Election department about the leakage. All these are in practice since 15 to 50 years. So, the argument itself is irrelevant like the identity argument, since census will have more identities parameters than UID and all who oppose UID welcome the census procedure or did not raise a single word against census!
Thanks
Bipin
------------------------------
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Radhakrishnan
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