India pledges to abolish poverty

By Steve Schifferes
Economics reporter, BBC News

India's finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, has pledged to end poverty in India within two generations.
Mr Chidambaram told BBC World Service that if economic growth continued, India could end poverty by 2040. India would play its part in the post-Kyoto negotiations on climate change, he said, though he insisted that "we have a right to grow". Mr Chidambaram also vowed to protect poor farmers from the ravages of free trade in agriculture.
Poverty and growth
Mr Chidambaram, who became finance minister in 2004 after the Congress Party unexpectedly won the general election, has presided over an Indian economy which is currently growing at 9% per year, almost as fast as China.
He told the BBC that his task was "to ensure not only growth but that this growth is inclusive growth" which reaches India's 250m poor people. Mr Chidambaram said that "growth is the best antidote to poverty". "Growth gives incomes to people with jobs, throws up jobs for those who are not employed," he said. "Therefore growth is imperative, but it is not sufficient in a country ... where a significant number live in poverty."
The finance minister said it would take until 2040 to wipe out "abject poverty" but he was confident that if growth continued to be strong, it would happen. "We will not have the abject poverty that afflicts about 25% of India's population. People will have homes, work, food, clothing, and access to education and medical care."
Climate change
With negotiations entering a delicate phase on climate change, the position of India and China - who were not given any pollution targets in the Kyoto round of talks - is being closely watched.
Mr Chidambaram said that the West was being unfair to India by demanding sharp cuts in emissions just as India's economy was taking off. "When the developed world was growing, no one asked them: why are you consuming so much energy, why didn't you slow down?" he said. "The point is, we have the right to grow, just as much as the US and Europe had a right to grow in the 19th and 20th centuries." But he said that India was willing "to take our share of responsibility, provided we have access to clean technologies and clean development mechanisms."
Trade
The finance minister said that India's openness to the forces of globalisation had helped stimulate growth, but that there were winners and losers. "The positive aspects of globalisation will be greater capital flows, more trade, more jobs in the services sector, more exports," he said.
India's IT services sector has become a global leader in outsourcing, and earns $25bn a year which boosts India's foreign exchange reserves. The finance minister said it was a myth that India's advantage was its cheap labour. "The point is, India's labour is skilled, and today we are a major hub of manufacturing," he said. "We even export Mercedes Benz cars made in India back to Germany."
But Mr Chidambaram accepted that there were also potential losers, especially in the agricultural sector, which still employs the majority of the workforce. "The negative aspects which we are guarding against are the impact on agriculture," he said. "Agriculture in India today is a livelihood issue, which is why, when we go to the WTO, we do not look at agriculture simply as a trading issue, we have to protect the livelihood of millions of people," he added.
And the finance minister said India would stand firm. "If the developed countries continue to subsidise agriculture and then seek access to India's market, it will of course immiserise our farming population, and we will never let that happen." His remarks on this score will not be seen as helpful for the resumption of world trade talks, which have been stalled since the summer over the issue of agricultural subsidies.
Infrastructure woes
Some economists worry that India will not be able to sustain its high rate of economic growth unless it can dramatically improve its ageing infrastructure. But Mr Chidambaram said that foreign investment could help overcome the infrastructure gap, provided that India "continues to observe fiscal prudence... ensures that there is an enabling environment for investors, both foreign and domestic... and ensure that these investments are made widely and managed wisely."
And the markets seem to agree with him. India's international credit rating was recently upgraded by credit agencies, and foreign investment has been surging into the country - although India is still a long way behind China on that score.
Mr Chidambaram was interviewed by Mike Williams for "The Interview", broadcast on BBC World Service on 3/4 February.

In Loving Memory of Lester Harold Young, 1921-2004

Male Breast Cancer
Breast cancer in men is a rare disease. Less than 1% of all breast cancers occur in men. In 2005, when 211,400 women were diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States, 1,690 men were diagnosed with the disease.

You may be thinking: Men don't have breasts, so how can they get breast cancer? The truth is that boys and girls, men and women all have breast tissue. The various hormones in girls and women's bodies stimulate the breast tissue to grow into full breasts. Boys' and men's bodies normally don't make much of the breast-stimulating hormones. As a result, their breast tissue usually stays flat and small. Still, you may have seen boys and men with medium-sized or big breasts. Usually these breasts are just mounds of fat. But sometimes men can develop real breast gland tissue because they take certain medicines or have abnormal hormone levels.

Because breast cancer in men is rare, few cases are available to study. Most studies of men with breast cancer are very small. But when a number of these small studies are grouped together, we can learn more from them.

I miss my Dad every moment of every day.

The Dinka of Southern Sudan

Dusty sums

Now that 21 years of war in South Sudan is over, the government is starting to provide social services, such as education.
This school, the first of its kind in its region, is a private school and now has more than 100 pupils. But getting basic supplies in a region with very few roads is a huge challenge.

The children practise their maths in the dirt because they do not yet have access to paper and pencils.



Traditional banks

For countless generations, cattle have played a central role in the life of many African peoples, such as the Dinka of South Sudan, Micah Albert writes.
In the absence of banks, cattle are used as a store of wealth.

Some Dinkas will be rich in cattle terms - with hundreds of animals - and yet they will go hungry and wear rags.

Cattle camps are where Dinka culture is passed down to the next generation.

Green Children

Milla Sunde and Tom Bevan established The Green Children Foundation to support microcredit, education and healthcare. Last year, The Green Children shot a music video in Bangladesh to celebrate the work of Professor Muhammad Yunus, the father of microcredit and founder of The Grameen Bank.


The Norwegian 'Hear Me Now' campaign has been a great success, raising $314,000 so far.

Healthcare.
The Green Children have committed to support the building of a new hospital in Bangladesh. This hospital will perform thousands of cataracts operations for people who would otherwise go blind from a very preventable disease. Dr. Yunus initiated this program with Grameen to save the sight of many of his countrymen and women.
Click here to find out more.

Microcredit and Education.
We firmly believe that given a chance, people have the ability to lift themselves out of poverty. We have seen that as people prosper, family sizes are reduced, children are educated, and greater care is taken for the environment.

Microcredit has been incredibly successful, but more people need access to it. Only 10% of the world's demand is currently met. We plan to do our part to extend the reach of micro-finance so that the many who need it are not left with empty hands.

My Note: Here is another example of people in action. This time it includes music.

http://www.thegreenchildren.org

India's rise as a manufacturing giant

By Alam Srinivas
Business editor, Outlook magazine

India Inc is on a roll after a series of recent global mega-mergers and hostile takeovers in the recent past.
Earlier this week, KM Birla's Hindalco acquired the world's largest producer of rolled aluminium products, Novelis, for $6bn. Before that, LN Mittal - who is based in London but holds an Indian passport - took over the world's largest steel-maker, Arcelor, and Ratan Tata gobbled up another steel manufacturer, Corus, to become the fifth largest producer.
The deals herald the emergence on the world stage of global Indian entrepreneurs in manufacturing, and indicate that India is becoming an international hub for metals, petro-products and auto components.
Global leaders
The rise of the manufacturing giants follows that of services firms, like TCS, Wipro and Infosys, who have all left their mark globally. Now ambitious Indian conglomerates are thinking of either crashing into the Fortune 500 list, or vastly improving their existing position.
The country's second largest private firm, the Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries, aims to be among the top 10 in the list. With Novelis in the bag, Kumar Birla's Hindalco Industries is sure to enter the list, three years ahead of its target year. Others like Videocon, Moser Baer and Bharat Forge have emerged as global leaders in their respective sectors.
A Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report last May argued that "a revolution in global business is under way", and the axis of corporate power was shifting towards the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries. It identified 100 new global challengers from these nations, which included 21 Indian firms, including Bharat Forge, Hindalco, Videocon and Tata Steel.


Last year, a McKinsey study found the dynamics in emerging markets like India "actually provide an invaluable springboard" for their companies to go global. A 2006 study by Mape, an investment bank, concluded "the Indian Multinational Company (MNC) has finally come of age" and "Indian buyers have become a force to reckon with in many industries such as pharma, auto components and oil and gas".
Factors such as liberal policies, access to cash, and the rise of entrepreneurial ambitions are responsible for the emergence of global Indian groups. At a public meeting a few weeks ago, India's Finance Minister, P Chidambaram, commented that Tata Steel's multi-billion dollar interest in Corus reflected the rising aggression among Indian promoters.
Ratan Tata, who was present, countered that this would not have been possible five years ago because of restrictive policies. Even as Indians shop abroad, foreigners are eyeing investment potential in India.


Operational incentives
But unlike the 1990s, when global MNCs wished to tap only the burgeoning base of Indian middle-class consumers, they are now planning to take advantage of low costs and widely available natural resources to make India their exports hub.
In steel, Arcelor-Mittal and South Korea's Posco wish to set up a plant producing 10 million tonnes of steel every year in the east of India - for both domestic sales and exports. A similar trend can be witnessed in other sectors like auto components.
As India plans to build dozens of special economic zones, with a slew of financial and operational incentives, it will attract more foreign investors. A recent DSP Merrill Lynch study pointed out that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows to India this fiscal year (2006-07) are likely to overtake Foreign Institutional Investors' investments (FII) on Indian bourses.
Between April and November 2006, India's FDI inflows stood at $7.3bn, a 117% rise over the same period in the previous year. With foreign money pouring in, Indian firms have no option but to become bigger, better and bolder.
Buy the world
They have to go global and capture new geographical markets. If the proposed Mittal or Posco plant had come up in India prior to the Tata-Corus deal, Tata Steel would have become a puny player even in the domestic market.

Now, with an additional annual production capacity of 19 million tonnes, Tata Steel can effectively compete with either of them, both globally and domestically. Other Indian groups like Birla and Dhoot (of Videocon) have realised they have to initiate similar acquisition moves in a bid to survive - and thrive.
Grant Thornton has estimated that while Indian outbound deals, or global mergers and acquisitions, were valued at $4.3bn in 2005, they crossed the $15bn mark in 2006. In the first month of this year, the two combined deals (Tata-Corus and Birla-Novelis) have been valued at over $18bn.
Indians, it seems, are taking over - or buying out - the world.

Amputee Cup

The first All-African Amputee Football Tournament is taking place in Sierra Leone.
Many players lost their limbs as a result of atrocities during wars, gun-shot wounds or land-mines. Sierra Leone are the experienced favourites, but Ghana and Liberia have been training hard and could cause an upset. The winners go throught to the world cup, later this year.
Coach


Coach Kemoh Sheriff lived with amputee footballers in a displaced persons' camp after the war.
"One day I went to the beach and saw them training without a coach. They all know me and asked me to train them." Having picked up some coaching tips from trips to England, he drills them mercilessly at practice sessions. Rumours that the Nigerian team have received some tips from Nigerian stars have made him work them harder. "We need victory. I know we will win."


Dream
Jim Frere has a dream to fill the national stadium with football fans for the final on Valentine's Day. An ex-UK police officer. He helped secure Fifa funding for the event. "The dream is now a reality. Look at what it means to people here: all they need is a pair of sticks and a ball. They have fitness, strength and skill: these are athletes. It stops them being second-class citizens."

California's model rehab centre

BBC News, California


It has been called the most successful rehabilitation programme in the world.
The Delancey Street Foundation in San Francisco puts hardened criminals - including thieves and murderers - in charge of their own recovery and it doesn't take a penny in grant money from the United States government.
Instead the residents support themselves - and each other - by running a string of businesses including a gourmet restaurant. It is a 500-strong family, and - much like a normal family - the punishment for those who step out of line is washing the dishes.

Nestling in the shadow of San Francisco's Bay Bridge the Delancey Street Foundation looks more like an upscale Mediterranean resort than a commune for ex-cons. Inside the place is immaculate.
The first stop on our tour: a gourmet waterfront restaurant run by the residents and open to the public for lunch and dinner.
The place serves around 500 people a day, most of whom have no idea the man or woman serving them is a former car thief or a cat burglar.

It takes four years to graduate from the Delancey Street foundation

Living together
As we moved on to tour the coffee shop, car service and bookstore James told me residents live and work together, pool their income and take responsibility for each other's welfare.
Funding for Delancey Street comes from profits generated by the businesses and donations. There is no cost to the residents, the community or the government.
In the canteen and the common room gang members rubbed shoulders with hit men, Mafiosi chewed the cud with con men, and white-collar criminals shot the breeze with white supremacists.
There was no hint of tension; the residents all seemed far too busy for that, either acquiring an education or learning new job skills.
Then it was back to the restaurant for high tea with Mimi Silbert (criminal psychologist), the founder of Delancey Street, and the only person in the place who is not a former criminal.
Glowing with pride
She founded Delancey Street in 1971 with four residents and $1000 (£507) loan and has since turned a decrepit warehouse into a lavish residential and retail centre, a place which has seen more than 14,000 multiple offenders transformed into law-abiding citizens.

Mimi Silbert founded Delancey Street in 1971

Mimi says Delancey Street does not accept former sex offenders or psychiatric patients, simply because they require special care. With such care she believed the concept could work for them too.

My Note: This is an edited version of a report on BBC. This is an excellent project and I encourage you to use this as a tool to change the thinking on rehabilitation. It needs to be a lot less punitive.