2004 was a good year for removing poverty because developing countries experienced a 6.1 percent economic growth and according to the World Bank, this was an expansion unprecedented in history.

For example, most Americans would be surprised to learn that millions of poor people who live on less than $1 per day would be better off if they could go into debt. The reason they can’t is that the institutions required to sustain capitalism are not present.
The poor who are addressed in our lessons are the absolute poor — the more than 1 billion people around the world who live on less than $1 per day. They have nothing, and they have no way of acquiring anything because of the governmental and social institutions that surround them.
One big reason people in more advanced societies are able to enjoy a more comfortable existence is that they are able to purchase items by going into debt. Americans take that for granted. Any person living in absolute poverty would love to trade positions with any one of us and walk in our shoes — to have a job and be able to borrow money for a car or a home.
It’s a shame that America’s youth do not understand these basic economic concepts. If they did, they’d be less inclined to join globalization protests because they would understand why the economies of China and India grew by 8.8 percent and 6 percent, respectively, last year. [Ignorance shrouds capitalism’s profound impact on reducing poverty]

The poor who lost everything in the tsunami will have to rebuild everything from scratch and also depend on charity. In developed countries people have life insurance, house insurance, and insurance for all possible things. So when an earthquake or hurricane destroys property, these institutions of capitalism kick in and put people back on their feet.

Only about a quarter of the victims would have been breadwinners eligible for life insurance, and maybe only a quarter of them would have had any coverage, he added. The lack of coverage means global insurers expect to pick up only a small portion of the reconstruction bill following Sunday’s killer waves, which wreaked damage of more than $13.6 billion, according to Munich Re, the world’s biggest reinsurer.
In India, where more than 12,000 people died in the tsunami, only about a tenth of the billion-strong population has life insurance. In Sri Lanka, where the death toll could exceed 30,000, insurance is even less common. [Little insurance help for survivors]

.

Pakistanis cannot seem to digest the fact that (a) India did not accept aid (b) India is helping all its neighbors. Iftikar Gilani is sad that India did not accept aid from even China. So he writes an article quoting some Diplomats who have no names. It is pretty easy to write such stuff masking your jealousy and putting words into the mouth of invisible people.

The Indian government had even refused an aid offer from China which offered a $3 million aid package for tsunami victims in India. It has now joined in relief operations being carried out by the United States, Australia and Japan. Diplomats said the motive behind this move is India$(Bs (Burge to be recognised as a major power in the Indian Ocean along with these countries. The Indian navy has launched four rescue and relief operations $(O T(Bhe Operation Seawave (along the Andamans cost), Operation Rainbow in Sri Lanka, Operation Castor in the Maldives and the Operation Gambhir in Indonesia..[India wants all credit for tsunami relief operations]

The title of the article conveys all his frustration. India has never claimed credit for all the tsunami operations. There are many other countries which are involved in relief operations and this disaster has bought many countries alongwith India to put a humanitarian coalition of the willing and apparently no one contacted Pakistan to join them. In fact Pakistan is sending its Navy ships and flying sorties to Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Can well call them as jumping to earn brownie points ?
In fact Al-Jazeera of all places has an article giving India credit for not having to accept aid and for coming of age.

Gone were the days, when the first port of call for all heads of Indian government was either the US or the UN, whenever any big calamities hit its people. That newly acquired confidence will not go unnoticed by the rest of the world. India has come of age, and as befits a nation aspiring to be counted on the highest seats of world governance, India had taken the fi! rst step to project itself as a self-sufficient and responsible nation that could take care of its people without having to go around the world with a begging ball.
The next, step for India, will be, no doubt, to look beyond its borders and treat all such natural tragedies as common concern of all the people of the world. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has come out of that centuries old Brahmanical taboo that ghettoized India to its own shores. In today$(Bs (Bglobalized world, India under the new leadership, has confidently and promptly acquired the new accoutrements that perfectly suit the native ethos of a people humane enough to populate this vast continent of a nation, without any reference to ideologies of religion, caste, region, race and languages. Let all such ideologies compete to fit the criteria of being the best suited to India$(Bs (Bcoming of age and its humanitarian contribution to the peace and well-being of the world. [India’s Coming of Age, Post-Tsunami ]

There has been mention in Sulekha Newshopper that AID India is a charity that uses DYFI for its work. DYFI is the youth wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). To look for this, I scanned the AID India website and there was no mention of DYFI anywhere. So for example if you look at the despatch from Chennai you get to read

After the initial shock and chaos, we are now quite well organized to handle the relief efforts. A number of organizations have started working together to handle the relief work – AID, TNSF, Pondicherry Science Forum, Vidyarambam, Pratham and the PHM Organizations. We have formed a quick informal coalition to coordinate this work. As of now the state level coordination is being done from the AID-India office in Gopalapuram Chennai. [Update from Chennai-III]

But then if you look at the cached page from Google, you see that the word DYFI was taken out from the same paragraph.

After the initial shock and chaos, we are now quite well organized to handle the relief efforts. A number of organizations have started working together to handle the relief work – AID, TNSF, Pondicherry Science Forum, DYFI, Vidyarambam, Pratham and the PHM Organizations. We have formed a quick informal coalition to coordinate this work. As of now the state level coordination is being done from the AID-India office in Gopalapuram Chennai.[ Update from Chennai-III (cached version)]

The same editing is seen in the Update from Chennai and its cached version.
Why is AID India removing this DYFI word from all its documents ? Is it because they are no longer working with them or are they trying to remove the Communist link or are they supressing information ? Can anyone from AID India answer ?
From various reports I have been reading they seem to be doing excellent job on the ground and seem to have very little overhead.
Update:

AID India, an organisation I can

I have found Rajeev Srinivasan’s articles usually interesting. Writing about the tsunamis that devastated South East Asia he writes

I pooh-poohed one T John when he claimed that the Gujarat quake was a sign from above, but now I am beginning to wonder.
The devastation by the tsunami in Tamil Nadu, could it be a caveat from Up There about the atrocities being visited on the Kanchi Acharya? About adharma gaining ground?
There are mysterious forces out there that are not fully understood by our oh-so-rational selves. I am reminded of the strange signs and omens that historians recorded before calamities: for instance the rain of frogs in Vietnam preceding the cataclysmic war. Or the odd celestial signs that preceded the death of Julius Caesar.
It is said that the very elements can be affected by the mystical powers of sages who have acquired superhuman powers through meditation and sadhana. I think we should all tread carefully, for now we are treading on things we do not know. [Give so others may live again!]

So two tectonic plates after witnessing the so called atrocities against the Kanchi Acharya decided to knock each other off. Does Rajeev seriously believe that mystical powers of sages contributed to this calamity ? If so why are people in Sri Lanka and Thailand killed ?
There are not many right-wing columnists in India and if the existing ones start producing wierd theories like this no one will take them seriously.

If there were warning systems in place, many lives could have been saved. But then it takes a disaster of this magnitutde to realize how far we are behind in terms of technology or even common sense. But now the cog wheels of the bureaucracy are moving

The government on Monday decided to install seafloor pressure-recording system in the Indian Ocean to be forewarned about tsunamis and to prevent the recurrence of the catastrophe witnessed on Sunday.
The pressure-recording system, which will be imported from the US, will also strengthen the country’s cyclone warning system, considering the fact that 25 per cent of the world’s cyclones are recorded in the Bay of Bengal, Minister of State for Science and Technology Kapil Sibal told reporters in New Delhi.
The new system will be linked to existing devices called data buoys, which record sea surface parametres, he said after a meeting with the officials of his ministry.
“If the country had had such an alert system in place, then we could have warned the coastal areas of the imminent danger and prevented the loss of life,” he said.
The government has also decided to join a network of 26 countries that warn each other about changes in sea pressure and the possibility of the onset of high tidal waves caused by earthquakes under sea, Sibal said. [India to import system that detects tsunamis]

The death toll is just climbing. If you would like to help financially, the Acorn has all the links.

The Information Minister of the Congress government in Andhara Pradesh state, Mohammad Ali Shabber, Monday said that 150 million Indian Muslims feel that Pakistan is following a wrong policy on Kashmir as Islam does not allow any kind of violence.
The Muslim minister said: “You Pakistanis need to understand that despite certain instances of communal violence here, we the Muslims are otherwise quite safe in our own worship places in a Hindu-dominated society. On the other hand, Pakistani Muslims are killing each other in their mosques in the name of Islam, Shiaism and Sunniism.”
Talking to a group of visiting Pakistani journalists, the minister said the Indian Muslims were enjoying fruits of secularism and democracy. Without mincing any words, he said Pakistanis need to realise that the Indian Muslims strongly support New Delhi over Kashmir and want the Pakistani government and public to stop interfering in Indian held Kashmir. This, he said, was in the best interest of everybody. [Indian Muslims back Delhi on Kashmir, claims minister]

Ouch! That should hurt a lot. The appropriate response from the other side would be to call Mohammad Ali Shabber a Hindu stooge.

The Communist Party of India on Thursday sought the Centre

After passing resolutions condeming the invasion of Iraq by the Coalition forces, India is now cozying up to the Interim Govt. Iraq’s foreign minister Hoshiyar Zebari is to visit India this month.

As a first step, India has offered to train 30 Iraqi electoral officials in India, but the government is clearly ready to go beyond making contributions in procedures and arrangements. The elections, the government feels, are a useful instrument for India tossing its hat into the Iraq ring yet again.
With a declared “hands-off” policy on Iraq surviving the NDA government, India has found itself increasingly marginalised in the global stakes in Iraq and clearly missing out on the action. The bedrock of India’s shift comes from the realisation that Iraq’s stability is in India’s interest which is reaching out to West Asia in a new way. From energy to strategic stability in the Islamic world, India wants a more hands-on role. [India to ‘unshackle’ Iraq policy]

The reality is that Saddam Hussein is not going to come back to power and Iraq has the second largest oil reserves. With so much oil consumption in India, it is better we get friendly with the Iraqi administration.

Small men thrown into big chairs – that’s how Manmohan Singh decribed the Hurriyat leaders. They claim to be the representatives of the Kashmiris, though they do not believe in elections. When the Pakistan Prime Minister visits India, he meets the Hurriyat and do not even meet the actual elected representatives of Jammu and Kashmir.

All the same, no impartial traveller to the Valley in recent years even during the drift could have missed the sheer disregard in which the Hurriyat and its leaders are held by the people, angry and disgusted though they are with the high-handed and often unacceptable behaviour of our security forces. Even in its high noon in the turmoil years, the Hurriyat did not represent, in terms of popular support, a relation to the gun-toting outfits akin to, say, the Sinn Fein and the IRA. The British government’s talks with the Sinn Fein do not, therefore, come as a surprise.
The Hurriyat had no grassroots life, and it did not care to develop one. In any case, this would have been near-impossible, given the mutually antagonistic and disparate orientation of Hurriyat constituents. Its constituents were removed from the culture of traditional mass politics which presumes linkages to the people. The exception among today’s big boys’ is Ali Shah Geelani, a na-turally gifted, strongly pro-Pakistan leader who is influential among orthodox Jamaat-e-Islami sections dispersed across the Valley. Though the Hurriyat does not have many takers within the Valley, its usefulness to Islamabad can not be overemphasised. Its strawmen, the handsomely rewarded naysayers, provide Pakistan the proverbial fig-leaf that no foreign meddler can do without. [Hurriyat Doesn’t Represent Kashmiri Aspirations]