by Alex Evans | May 15, 2009 | South Asia
Indian writer Aravind Adiga yesterday offered the winner of India’s election a heads-up on four emergencies likely to test them early in their term of office. Two of them – terrorism, and India’s fiscal position – aren’t any great surprise. The other two?
Three: In the past few weeks, the Naxals – Maoist guerrillas who operate in the desperately poor states of north and central India – have attacked a major aluminium mine, killed voters and policemen, and disrupted trains. The Naxal insurgency, which taps into the resentment of those left out or threatened by the economic boom, has grown steadily in the past five years. Yet most urban Indians still think of it as an obscure menace that is “out there” – far from the cities and towns.
This is likely to change. The emboldened guerillas look set to escalate their war against the Indian state in the months ahead. Attacks on industries, mines, police stations and trains are likely to rise; a spectacular strike that grabs national and international attention is on the cards. Understaffed local police and corrupt regional politicians will not be able to deal with the Naxals without significantly greater assistance from New Delhi.
Four: India’s population continues to grow and demand for water – for irrigation, industrial and personal consumption – keeps mounting; yet no government has given enough thought to husbanding the country’s water resources. Tensions over the use of water simmer across India. Sooner or later, they will explode. In the months after a bad monsoon, for example, there could be a flare-up between neighbouring regions over the use of a shared river; this could lead to strikes and protests that paralyse parts of the country.
Here’s the go-to site on Naxalites, btw.
by Daniel Korski | Feb 4, 2009 | UK
Something odd is happening. Though the Tories are cruising for electoral success, many sympathisers are worried that the party has neither the policies nor personalities to make a success of government.
In the City, many bankers and businessmen are unimpressed by George Osborne. People in the defence establishment think Liam Fox is a lightweight. And foreign policy-watchers like William Hague, but worries that he is only working part-time.
When David Milliband offered a duff analysis of international terrorism in The Guardian and managed to insult the Indian government, there was hardly a peep from the Tory frontbench, through the strategic and electoral reasons to speak up are obvious.
This may not prevent the Tories from wining an election, but it could make their time in government look a lot like Labour’s 1997-2001 term – full of intentions and spin, but short on delivery.
It will take more than an “Implementation Unit” to change this. However, George W Bush, Barack Obama and Gordon Brown may have shown the way out of this predicament. They have all brought outsiders or retired officials back into government. Bush brought back General Pete Schoomaker as Army chief and, famously, made Roberts Gates Defence Secretary. Obama has appointed retired admiral Denis Blair as the U.S spy chief and made the Nobel Prize winner Steven Chu Energy Secretary. Brown, meanwhile, has packed the Lords with outsiders, Peter Mandelson just being the most famous (and powerful).
Forgetting for a moment the constitutional problems presented by having too many peers in government as well as the problems arising from having apolitical ministers (like Shriti “Green Shoots” Vadera) what would a line-up of Tory GOATS look like? Readers will have their own views, but to kick-start the discussion here is my list:
1. Arcadia’s Phillip Green as Business Secretary
2. Olympian Sebastian Coe as Sports and Culture Secretary
3. Environmentalist Zac Goldsmith to head the Climate & Energy Department
4. The Times Foreign Affairs Editor Bronwen Maddox as National Security Adviser
5. Former General Rupert Smith as Chief of Defence
6. Ex-AVIVA boss Richard Harvey as International Development Secretary
7. Joel I Klein as Education Secretary (why not a Yank?)
8. Para-Olympian Chris Holmes as Veteran Affairs Secretary
It may also be wise to appoint a number of junior ministers from outside Westminster (though I confess to believing each department ought to have only one “Deputy Secretary of State”, not scores of Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries). In the Ministry of Defence, for example, I’d make someone like NATO’s Jamie Shea a junior minister or Ronnie Flanagan a Deputy Home Secretary.
What do you think?
by Alex Evans | Feb 4, 2009 | East Asia and Pacific, Economics and development, Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia
As David just noted, this morning’s Lex column in the FT is relatively upbeat about the dangers of protectionism, arguing that “the disaggregation of global supply chains, the source of the huge efficiencies that companies pass on to consumers, will not be easily undone.”
Whether or not that’s right (and like Willem Buiter, Martin Wolf is also a good deal more downcast than the Lex team), it’s interesting to compare today’s Lex column with what they had to say about capital flows to emerging markets just a couple of days ago. Here’s the bit that made me sit up:
Take Brazil and India, the globe’s ninth and 12th biggest economies, according to the International Monetary Fund’s latest estimates. While the developed world is expected to shrink by 2 per cent this year, the IMF reckons Brazil will grow by 2 per cent, and India by 5 per cent. Why? One answer is that they have stable banks, relatively closed economies, and large internal markets. This has insulated them from much of the global turmoil.
The contrast with East Asia is stark. Singapore’s economy shrank at an annualised 17 per cent rate at the end of last year, South Korea by some 20 per cent. Yet this is not for lack of capital. Asian economies, after all, are global creditors. Their economies have shrunk instead because they are heavily oriented towards collapsing international trade. Meanwhile, their local markets are undeveloped and weak. Asia’s challenge is how to best deploy its accumulated surpluses to boost domestic demand.
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by David Steven | Feb 3, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, East Asia and Pacific
In an interview with the FT yesterday, Wen Jiabao sets out China’s negotiating position in the run up to the Copenhagen climate negotiation. Three main points:
- Green stimulus as part of the response to the financial meltdown.
- Domestic action to increase energy intensity by 4% a year (“We failed to meet the targets in the first two years of the five year period, and we succeeded in meeting the target in 2008.”)
- No quantified emissions targets for China – the country is still at an early stage of development and “in terms of per capita greenhouse gas emissions, we are certainly not the biggest one.”
How strong is China’s position? Not very, I think. China is obviously right to expect the rich world to do more, but if they accept tough targets and China refuses to, then there are two consequences. 450ppm stabilization becomes impossible – and it’s the rest of the G77 that will end up with a highly inequitable deal.
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by David Steven | Jan 30, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Cooperation and coherence, Global system
Image Author: mike_is_scrumptious
Assume a robust global deal on climate and the world’s cities will have to transform their infrastructure, economies and societies in little more than a generation.
Assume uncontrolled emissions growth and they face growing impact from a less hospitable and more volatile climate.
Either way – big changes are on the way. Few cities’ leaders grasp the scale of the challenge, especially in developing countries, where towns and cities will have an additional 1.5bn residents to cope with by 2030.
This new think piece has been prepared as part of the British Council’s Climate and Cities programme. Download the pdf (which has full references) or read the full text below the jump.
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