Vishwajeet singh: The economy of India is the eleventh largest econo...

Vishwajeet singh: The economy of India is the eleventh largest econo...: The economy of India is the eleventh largest economy in the world by nominal GDP and the fourth largest by purchasing power parity (PPP)...

The economy of India is the eleventh largest economy in the world by nominal GDP and the fourth largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). In the 1990s, following economic reform from the socialist-inspired economy of post-independence India, the country began to experience rapid economic growth, as markets opened for international competition and investment. In the 21st century, India is an emerging economic power with vast human and natural resources, and a huge knowledge base. Economists predict that by 2020, India will be among the leading economies of the world.

India was under social democratic-based policies from 1947 to 1991. The economy was characterised by extensive regulation, protectionism, and public ownership, leading to pervasive corruption and slow growth. Since 1991, continuing economic liberalisation has moved the economy towards a market-based system. A revival of economic reforms and better economic policy in 2000s accelerated India's economic growth rate. By 2008, India had established itself as the world's second-fastest growing major economy. However, the year 2009 saw a significant slowdown in India's official GDP growth rate to 6.1%  as well as the return of a large projected fiscal deficit of 10.3% of GDP which would be among the highest in the world.

India's large service industry accounts for 62.6% of the country's GDP while the industrial and agricultural sector contribute 20% and 17.5% respectively. Agriculture is the predominant occupation in India, accounting for about 52% of employment. The service sector makes up a further 34%, and industrial sector around 14%.  The labor force totals half a billion workers. Major agricultural products include rice, wheat, oilseed, cotton, jute, tea, sugarcane, potatoes, cattle, water buffalo, sheep, goats, poultry and fish. Major industries include telecommunications, textiles, chemicals, food processing, steel, transportation equipment, cement, mining, petroleum, machinery, information technology enabled services and software.

India's per capita income (nominal) is $1124, ranked 139th in the world, while its per capita (PPP) of US$3176 is ranked 128th. Previously a closed economy, India's trade has grown fast,  India currently accounts for 1.5% of World trade as of 2007 according to the WTO. According to the World Trade Statistics of the WTO in 2006, India's total merchandise trade (counting exports and imports) was valued at $294 billion in 2006 and India's services trade inclusive of export and import was $143 billion. Thus, India's global economic engagement in 2006 covering both merchandise and services trade was of the order of $437 billion, up by a record 72% from a level of $253 billion in 2004. India's trade has reached a still relatively moderate share 24% of GDP in 2006, up from 6% in 1985.

Despite robust economic growth, India continues to face many major problems. The recent economic development has widened the economic inequality across the country. Despite sustained high economic growth rate, approximately 80% of its population lives on less than $2 a day (PPP). Even though the arrival of Green Revolution brought end to famines in India, 40% of children under the age of three are underweight and a third of all men and women suffer from chronic energy deficiency.

The Indian rupee is the only legal tender accepted in India. The exchange rate as on 23 March 2010 is 45.40 INR the USD, 61.45 to a EUR, and 68.19 to a GBP. The Indian rupee is accepted as legal tender in the neighboring Nepal and Bhutan, both of which peg their currency to that of the Indian rupee. The rupee is divided into 100 paise. The highest-denomination banknote is the 1,000 rupee note; the lowest-denomination coin in circulation is the 25 paise coin (it earlier had 1, 2, 5, 10 and 20 paise coins which have been discontinued by the Reserve Bank of India).

The Rupee hit a record low during early 2009 on account of global recession. However, due to a strong domestic market, India managed to bounce back sooner than the western countries. Since September 2009 there has been a constant appreciation in Rupee versus most Tier 1 currencies. On 11 January 2010 Rupee went as high as 45.50 to a United states dollar and on 10 January 2010 as high as Rupee 73.93 to a British Pound. A rising rupee also prompted Government of India to buy 200 tonnes of Gold from IMF.

The RBI, the country's central bank was established on 1 April 1935. It serves as the nation's monetary authority, regulator and supervisor of the financial system, manager of exchange control and as an issuer of currency. The RBI is governed by a central board, headed by a governor who is appointed by the Central government of India.

Today, more people can afford a bicycle than ever before. Some 40% of Indian households owns a bicycle, with ownership rates ranging from around 30% to 70% at state level.[1Housing is modest. According to Times of India, "a majority of Indians have per capita space equivalent to or less than a 10 feet x 10 feet room for their living, sleeping, cooking, washing and toilet needs." and "one in every three urban Indians lives in homes too cramped to exceed even the minimum requirements of a prison cell in the US."[137] The average is 103 sq ft (9.6 m2) per person in rural areas and 117 sq ft (10.9 m2) per person in urban areas

Around half of Indian children are malnourished. The proportion of underweight children is nearly double that of Sub-Saharan Africa. However, India has not had famines since the Green Revolution in the early 1970s. While poverty in India has reduced significantly, official figures estimate that 27.5%  of Indians still lived below the national poverty line of $1 (PPP, around 10 rupees in nominal terms) a day in 2004-2005 A 2007 report by the state-run National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) found that 65% of Indians, or 750 million people, lived on less than 20 rupees per day with most working in "informal labour sector with no job or social security, living in abject poverty."

Since the early 1950s, successive governments have implemented various schemes, under planning, to alleviate poverty, that have met with partial success. All these programmes have relied upon the strategies of the Food for work programme and National Rural Employment Programme of the 1980s, which attempted to use the unemployed to generate productive assets and build rural infrastructure. In August 2005, the Indian parliament passed the Rural Employment Guarantee Bill, the largest programme of this type in terms of cost and coverage, which promises 100 days of minimum wage employment to every rural household in all the India's 600 districts. The question of whether economic reforms have reduced poverty or not has fuelled debates without generating any clear cut answers and has also put political pressure on further economic reforms, especially those involving the downsizing of labour and cutting agricultural subsidies.

who is Indian? an Ambiguity still prevails

While studying sociology of tribe and sociology of India- I always  messes with a question of nationality and citizenship. When the question of who is a Hindu ?  we get a multitude of confused and contradictory answers from both Hindu laypersons and from Hindu leaders. That we have such a difficult time understanding the answer to even so fundamental a question as "who is a Hindu?" is a starkly sad indicator of the lack of knowledge in the Hindu community today.

Common Answers:

Some of the more simplistic answers to this question include: Anyone born in India is automatically a Hindu (the ethnicity fallacy), if your parents are Hindu, then you are Hindu (the familial argument), if you are born into a certain caste, then you are Hindu (the genetic inheritance model), if you believe in reincarnation, then you are Hindu (forgetting that many non-Hindu religions share at least some of the beliefs of Hinduism), if you practice any religion originating from India, then you are a Hindu (the national origin fallacy).

The Real Answer seems unreal:

The real answer to this question has already been conclusively answered by the ancient sages of Hinduism, and is actually much simpler to ascertain than we would guess. The two primary factors that distinguish the individual uniqueness of the great world religious traditions are a) the scriptural authority upon which the tradition is based, and b) the fundamental religious tenet(s) that it espouses. If we ask the question what is a Jew?, for example, the answer is: someone who accepts the Torah as their scriptural guide and believes in the monotheistic concept of God espoused in these scriptures. What is a Christian? - a person who accepts the Gospels as their scriptural guide and believes that Jesus is the incarnate God who died for their sins. What is a Muslim? - someone who accepts the Qur'an as their scriptural guide, and believes that there is no God but Allah, and that Mohammed is his prophet.

Scriptural Authority
In general, what determines whether a person is a follower of any particular religion is whether or not they accept, and attempt to live by, the scriptural authority of that religion. This is no less true of Hinduism than it is of any other religion on earth. Thus, the question of what is a Hindu is similarly very easily answered.

The Definition

By definition, a Hindu is an individual who accepts as authoritative the religious guidance of the Vedic scriptures, and who strives to live in accordance with Dharma, God's divine laws as revealed in the Vedic scriptures.

Only If You Accept the Vedas

In keeping with this standard definition, all of the Hindu thinkers of the six traditional schools of Hindu philosophy (Shad-darshanas) insisted on the acceptance of the scriptural authority of the Vedas (shabda-pramana) as the primary criterion for distinguishing a Hindu from a non-Hindu, as well as distinguishing overtly Hindu philosophical positions from non-Hindu ones. It has been the historically accepted standard that, if you accept the Vedas (and by extension Bhagavad Gita, Puranas, etc.) as your scriptural authority, and lived your life in accordance with the Dharmic principles of the Vedas, you are then a Hindu. Thus, an Indian who rejects the Veda is obviously not a Hindu. While an American, Russian, Indonesian or Indian who does accept the Veda obviously is a Hindu.

The worst ever flood in the last 80 years, which has inundated almost a fifth of the country, and which has been described by the United Nations (UN) as "one of the worst humanitarian disasters" in UN history, is bound to impact adversely on every single person – either directly or indirectly – in Pakistan, potentially endangering the very structure of the nation. More alarmingly, with the Government failing to cope adequately with the calamity and once again allowing terrorist and Islamist extremist formations to ‘help’ the people, there is every possibility of even greater entrenchment of such groupings among a widening section of the masses. Significantly, these moves will dilute elements of Islamabad’s ‘war on terror’ and will enormously aid militants in expanding their capacities and operations.

Unexpected and unprecedented rains in end-July first flooded Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP, formerly known as North West Frontier Province). The water subsequently made its way down the Indus River system, inundating the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Punjab, Balochisatn and Sindh. At least 1,745 people have died in the natural calamity, which has affected more than 21 million people. Giving details of the disaster, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, on September 1, 2010, declared that the unprecedented floods had caused losses worth USD 43 billion to the country. He added that some 1,000 bridges and 4,000 kilometres of roads had been damaged by the water.

Despite the political rhetoric, however, Islamabad’s response to the crisis has been slow and lacklustre. The country already had almost 3.3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) as a result of sweeping and indiscriminate ‘counter-terrorism’ operations, and is estimated to have added another 2.2 million to this number as a result of the floods. Complaints about the callousness of approach and indifference of the authorities, both in Islamabad and the respective Provinces, have been widespread.

Even the international community has failed to deliver in the appropriate manner. The United Nations, which initially urged the international community to provide USD 460 million, and doubled this estimate later, has so far received pledges of just USD 325 million towards relief aid for Pakistan. The international community has also made some direct donations and pledges to the country, taking total pledges to USD 1 billion. However, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Pakistan has so far received just USD 291 million in aid from the international community. It is not clear what proportion of this aid has actually reached the target populations, and there are widespread allegations of corruption and the siphoning out of funds. The Pakistan Government has conceded that, till now, more than a million flood-affected people have received no relief at all. Meanwhile, the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) has urged the Pakistan Government to reject Western aid for flood victims, claiming that the monies would only be siphoned off by corrupt officials.

With official and international relief operations failing to deliver, militant groups, including the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI), the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Jama’at-ud-Da’awa (JUD), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), and radical Islamist political formations such as the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), are taking advantage of the flood situation, coming to the fore in collecting funds for ‘flood relief’. Reports indicate that some foreign funding, including contributions from Saudi Arabia, could flow directly to these organisations and through them, eventually, to al Qaeda and its network of affiliates.

The risks of further militant mobilisation through relief operations are manifest and significant. As Abdul Jabbar, 50, whose home was destroyed in Mingora town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, commented, "The Taliban are bringing us rice. We are hungry. People here have simple lives and are easily influenced. They have short memories and don't remember the blood spilled when the Taliban were more active here." Worryingly, the TTP, according to reports, is attempting to enlist 50,000 new fighters in return for food and medicine. Interior Minister Rehman Malik has emphasised that more aid was needed to stop terrorists from becoming heroes, saying, "There's huge need. Desperation gives birth to terrorism." President Asif Ali Zardari on August 24, also warned that the TTP could take advantage of the crisis and could kidnap children dislocated by the flooding to put them into terrorist training camps. Earlier, on August 19, expressing the fear that the children of flood-affected people and orphans could end up at terrorist training camps, he had noted, "We are giving them everything we’ve got. There is a possibility that some negative forces would exploit this situation. For example, militants can take orphaned babies and put them in terror training camps."

An unnamed senior US official also noted, on August 26, "There are certainly clear indications that the insurgents and affiliated groups are trying to use the flood and the relief from the flood to try to gain support for their broader effort of being able to control large parts of Pakistan... They're delivering aid. They bring money. They bring food."

Taking advantage of the floods, the militants are also relocating themselves. Significantly, the KP Government has demanded that the Federal Government launch an operation against militants who are regrouping in FATA to attack KP and Punjab. "TTP terrorists have started targeting settled areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa once again…," KP Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain stated on September 7. "Security Forces should now focus on terrorists’ activities rather than the flood (relief) activities. TTP are taking advantage of the flood situation and have restarted killing innocent citizens," he added. Hussain added that any further delay in operations against the TTP could put the whole country at risk, and that TTP-affiliated groups had once again strengthened their presence in Darra Adamkhel, Khyber, Mohmand and the Peshawar suburbs.

Though it is quite evident that militants have ‘utilised’ the floods to their own advantage, some damage has also been inflicted on al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, TTP and various Punjabi terrorist organizations as a result of the floods, though its exact quantum is difficult to estimate. A substantial proportion of the training camps of these groups Afghan Taliban, were located in areas which are presently under water. However, the Afghan Taliban, which operates from the Quetta area of Balochistan, has not been significantly affected, as the flood has had only marginal impact in these areas. The Afghan Taliban has been able to sustain its operations in Afghanistan even after the deluge.

Nevertheless, the intensity of the floods has failed to mitigate the intensity of terrorism in Pakistan. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal database a total of 874 people were killed in terrorism related violence in the month of July, when the flood started to create havoc. As the floods peaked in August, fatalities came down to 320 – but principally because of a decline in terrorist fatalities, as Army operations were suspended under the impact of the natural catastrophe. Fatalities categorised as ‘terrorist’ declined from 618 in July, to 177 in August. With the waters receding, terrorist activities have again gathered force, with fatalities touching 300 in just the first twelve days of September, including 95 ‘terrorists’. While 44 major incidents (involving three or more than three killings) were recorded in July, the number came down to 24 in August, but was up at 20 during by September 12. The number of suicide attacks in these months stands at five, two and five respectively.

Alarmingly, it is for the first time since January 2009 that the number of civilians killed during a month has been more than the militants killed, indicating that the militants are on rampage even while military operations have been enormously hampered. The precarious flood situation has led to massive deployment of the Army in affected areas, with some 60,000 troops deployed for relief and rescue operation. Mohammed Anwar, a soldier, reportedly stated, "We are stretched to the limits. The Government has pulled thousands of soldiers away from Swat to help in relief across Pakistan. So the Taliban have returned with bags of money. It was a war we were winning – and because of the flood we are losing it again." Meanwhile, reports indicate that the Army’s planned operations in the North Waziristan Agency in FATA will be delayed due to the devastating floods.

This is a disaster of major proportions, and will have long-term impact on the capacities of terrorist groupings and the state’s agencies, and consequently on the trajectory of terrorism and the stability of the state in Pakistan. As the flood waters recede, the challenge of managing diseases, IDPs and massive rehabilitation and reconstruction work will be compounded by rising depredations of significantly strengthened terrorist formations, even as Pakistan’s chronic economic crisis worsens. As in the earthquake of October 8, 2005, the state in Pakistan has chosen to look the other way as Islamist terrorist and extremist formations take advantage of the state’s failure to deliver efficient relief to the affected populations. The current catastrophe is of a far greater magnitude than the calamity of 2005, and the advantages that will eventually accrue to the terrorists will be comparably greater.