Related posts:

Back to the future?

Detroit versus Wall Street

It’s bailout time again!

My next post:

A tale of two teens

…and one was made to believe that the ideology of communism and state ownership of enterprises had (deservedly) ended with the fall of the Iron Curtain!

Related posts:

Detroit versus Wall Street

It’s bailout time again!

It’s not easy to be classified as a champion team when you finished dead last in last year’s championship. However, the Deccan Chargers from Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh) have done just that – from the zeroes of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2008 to the undisputed champions of IPL 2009, it has been one dream journey for this deadly combination of crack cricketers led by Adam Gilchrist.

Gilly receives the trophy from the South African President, Jacob Zuma…

Image: www.deccanchargers.com

No one doubted the potential of this team – they have a great mix of youth and experience, a cool combination of seasoned international pros and talented young Indian cricketers. But, in last year’s inaugural edition of the Indian Premier League Twenty20 cricket, the team simply failed to click. All that is history now!

Gilchrist took over as the captain from VVS Laxman for this year’s IPL that was shifted to South Africa since the Indian government could not provide security for the tournament, as the dates coincided with the General Elections. It was a blessing in disguise for the League as it helped to increase its popularity beyond Indian shores. Full credit goes to Cricket South Africa for organising a fantastic tournament at a very short notice. We all look forward to the big one – the 2010 FIFA World Cup. South Africans have proved to be great organisers and wonderful hosts!

For the Chargers, it was a superb team effort that took them all the way. Gilchrist and his fellow Aussie, the DC coach Darren Lehmann have managed to bring out the best in all their boys. Young cricketers like Tirumalasetti Suman, Rohit Sharma, Pragyan Ojha and Harmeet Singh have proved themselves on the big stage while seasoned international pros like RP Singh (who won the Purple Cap for taking the most number of wickets in the tournament), Herschelle Gibbs, Ryan Harris and Andrew Symonds made great contributions at crucial stages to keep the charge going. Not to forget Gilly’s sterling contribution – he not only shouldered the burden of keeping wickets while leading the team, but got the Chargers’ off to a flying start with his aggressive batting as an opener. Chasing a big target in a pressure semi-final against the highly rated Delhi Daredevils, Gilchrist played the knock of the tournament, single handedly demolishing the Daredevils’ attack with his incredible hitting. It was champion stuff from a champion cricketer!

The Royal Challengers Bangalore is another team that deserves apprecation. The boys from Bengaluru (Karnataka) finished second last in the IPL 2008 and made an ordinary start in this year’s edition. Anil Kumble lifted the RCB to a new level when he took charge as skipper. The Challengers put together a string of successive victories over top teams and knocked out last year’s runners-up, the Chennai Super Kings, in the second semi-final. They lost the final narrowly to the Chargers in a pressure cooker situation.

There is no doubt about the heroes of this year’s IPL, though. It has to be the Chargers from Hyderabad! A word of praise for T. Venkattram Reddy, the DC team owner. He solidly backed his team and could be seen in the team dugout with his boys when some other team owners chose the comfort of the hospitality box. The team is owned by the Deccan Chronicle, a reputed broadsheet and South India’s largest selling English language newspaper. I guess when you are the undisputed numero uno in one field, it tends to rub off on your other business ventures too!

I look forward to watching the Deccan Chargers in action at the T20 Champions League. As the Chargers’ cheerleaders and fans say: GO, Chargers! GO, Chargers! GO, go, go, go!!!

Thanks to Prakash, my fellow blogger at Kalugu for his contribution in putting this post together!

The President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, inaugurated the country’s new deepwater oil field on Tuesday. Trial extraction of oil by Petrobras began in the Jubarte oil field 77 kilometers off the coast of the state of Espirito Santo. The discovery of massive oil reserves has triggered a debate in Brazil on how to use the country’s newly discovered oil wealth to fight poverty and transform the South American giant into a developed country.

Brazil . . . will oil lead to progress? . . .

Image: www.newspapercountry.com

President Lula, who grew up in extreme poverty (he was a shoeshine boy and a street vendor when he was a child), called the reserves a gift from God that should be used primarily to benefit the country by using it to lift people out of poverty and investing in education and health. Brazil may change its laws dealing with oil exploration and may create a new corporation to manage the oil reserves or increase its stake in Petrobras, the state-owned oil production company. Read more about the debate in this link.

Brazil also looks set to enhance its military capabilities to safeguard the country’s newly discovered wealth. The Brazilians are looking to develop the capability to build nuclear submarines with help from France or as a joint project with neighbour Argentina. A good move, as the notorious international killer corporate oil mafia may try filthy tricks to lay their dirty hands on the oil wealth that belongs to the people of the Latin American country.

Accelerated efforts to build Brazil’s first nuclear submarine are under way . . .

Image: www.globalsecurity.org

An alien Earthling wishes Brazilians good luck in their endeavours to utilise the newly discovered oil reserves to eradicate poverty in Brazil and to transform the country into a developed one!

Though the title mentions rice, this post is all about the rise in prices of staples (rice tops the list of staples) that has caused serious unrest in several parts of the world. Haiti’s government was thrown out and there were food riots in several parts of Africa and sporadic violence in other parts of the world. Even supermarkets in developed countries have begun rationing rice to their customers. Click on the link to read the post I wrote a few days ago about a looming disaster for many of our planetizens.

Paella is a very popular rice dish in Spain . . .

Image: www.flickr.com/ptc24

World leaders have woken up to this serious threat to the well-being of all Earthlings. The issue has become so serious that the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon has said that the U.N. and its affiliated organisations will set up a task force that will be headed by the Secretary-General himself. For more information, read this article on the site of Associated Press.

The U.N. has realised that rising food prices are a serious threat to growth and security and world peace itself. Development would be set back by seven years if this situation is not tackled immediately. Even a person like the World Bank President has warned that rising food prices would push 100 million into poverty and those who are already poor will suffer terribly. Read more about the threat to development goals in this article from Reuters.

The most heartening fact is that the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development feels that farm aid and fair trade is the key to solving this extremely urgent problem. I am delighted that someone has finally managed to call a spade a spade! Read more in this article.

I am shocked by the double standards of the ill-informed guys in the so-called ‘mainstream’ media who think that farm aid and small loan waivers for small and marginal farmers are ‘election sops’ while waiving multi-million dollar loans for corporate entities that are facing a crisis due to the deliberate mismanagement by the top brass is an act of ‘offering incentives’ for growth. Despicable double standards!

I think the time has come for the whole world to unite and put an end to the notorious ‘free market capitalism’ that has led the world to the present situation. ‘Free trade’ that is neither free nor fair should be replaced by fair trade! ‘Free market capitalism’ must be replaced by an economic system that is harmony with the universal ethical principles of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and Human Rights!

May all concepts that are opposed to those four principles perish! May such concepts be completely annihilated as humankind searches for ways to solve the present food crisis!

My previous article on the food crisis:

Here comes the horseman riding the black horse!

The Indian Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, tabled the central government’s budget for the financial year 2008-2009 in the Lower House of Parliament yesterday (February 29,2008). You can read about the highlights of the budget on this link and download the full text of the Finance Minister’s speech in pdf format from this link. This post will concentrate mainly on the impact on the agriculture sector apart from a few other important features.

Agriculture

The most important feature of the budget was a Rs.60,000 crore (600 billion INR/10 billion EUR/15 billion USD) debt-relief package for farmers. You can find the details on the two links given above. While this is a welcome step and was greeted with jubilation by farmers across the country, let us find out if this would be enough to tide over the agrarian crisis and pull agriculture from the brink of disaster.

Agrarian crisis

It is a well known fact that India is in the grip of a severe agrarian crisis that has led to farmers (mainly those cultivating cash crops) committing suicide in droves across the country. Unable to cope with rising input costs, erratic monsoons (seasonal winds that bring adequate rain – much of Indian agriculture depends on the two monsoons: the South-West Monsoon and the North-East Monsoon), ridiculously low minimum support price for certain crops, a falling water table that means increased fuel and sometimes electricity charges to draw groundwater, shortage of good quality fertilisers, pests that develop resistance to pesticides, generally disastrous trials with genetically modified crops, lack of agricultural credit and crop insurance, natural disasters like floods, changing weather patterns due to global warming, lack of modern techniques in agriculture, lack of access to the market, exploitation by middlemen and above all a total neglect of agriculture and rural areas by successive governments, farmers in different parts of the country are driven to the edge of the  cliff.

They are forced to borrow money from moneylenders at shockingly usurious rates of interest (the moneylenders sometimes confiscate the land of farmers if they fail to pay up). To compound the problem, health-care is almost non-existent in the rural areas and the state sponsored health-care system is on the verge of collapse in the urban areas. So farmers are also forced to cough up massive amounts of money for medical care in private hospitals. The poor farmers have no hope left and they consume the pesticides that have become useless against the pests but are sufficiently toxic to claim a human life.

The Magsaysay award winner and Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu - a respected English language broadsheet, P. Sainath, has covered the agrarian crisis in his series of articles in The Hindu and its sister magazine The Frontline (a fortnightly) and also in his book Everybody loves a good drought.

The Finance Minister seems to have taken a cue from the move of the government of his home state (Tamil Nadu). As soon as it came to power, the state government waived farm loans to the tune of Rs.6680 crore (66.8 billion INR/1.1 billion EUR/1.67 billion USD) taken from co-operative banks across the state of Tamil Nadu. This was a part of fulfilling poll promises made by the ruling party before the state election. The ruling Democratic Progressive Alliance (DPA) in the state of TN is a part of the ruling coalition at the centre-the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). The move of the state government was widely welcomed by farmers at the time just as the present move of the central government has been welcomed by farmers across the country. But is this the solution to the agrarian crisis that seems to be getting worse by the day?

The farm loan waiver comes at a time when farmers are in distress across the country. It should therefore be welcomed by all. But one should also spare a thought for the farmers who have taken loans from the usurious moneylenders as they were not entitled to loans from banks because of their poor loan repayment record. These farmers are the ones who are on the verge of committing suicide. While any relief for the beleaguered agriculture sector is welcome, I hope the governments across the country concentrate on striking at the root cause of the problem rather than finding stop-gap solutions, however welcome they may be at the moment. It is about time that the country concentrates on making the agriculture and allied sectors profitable, especially for small and marginal farmers as that alone would be the solution to most of the problems that India is facing at the moment. Struggling India should be turned into Shining India. There simply can be no other way forward.

Income tax benefits

The Finance Minister has also raised the exemption limit for income tax across the board – for men to Rs.1.50 lakh p.a.(150,000 INR/2470 EUR/3750 USD), for women to Rs.1.80 lakh p.a.(180,000 INR/2960 EUR/4500 USD) and for senior citizens to Rs.2.25 lakh p.a.(225,000 INR/3700 EUR/5620 USD). There are also some other benefits that are sure to be welcomed by the middle classes.

So, is this budget a preparation for an early general election? Or is it a late fulfillment of promises made to the common man before the last one? Only time will tell!