DarpanaLABs-PraxisPolaris

TOURISM-CENTRIC SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONES

2009-07-08T14:33:00.006+05:30

Sunvistas

SEZs-Some Conceptual Issues

The advent of SEZs in India in FY 2000 has brought to the fore conceptual issues vis-à-vis Export Processing Zones (EPZs). SEZs must not be construed as mere EPZs, where the focus is on promoting exports of specific products (eg, SEEPZ, Mumbai.

If one were to go by the established Chinese model, the SEZ concept is different which devolves on:

“an inclusive and intensive all round development of a region to world class standards, primed by FDI and trade-led growth policies”.

To steer clear of conceptual issues, educating the policy makers on the importance of SEZs to the Indian economy, particularly at the present juncture of development, is imperative.

Current Operational Status of SEZs

At present eight Special Economical Zones are functional where enterprises can be set up. They are: Kandla SEZ, SEEPZ, Santa Cruz, Mumbai, Noida, Chennai, Cochin, Falta, Visakhapatnam and Surat.

Exports from Special Economic Zones: According to latest information available from the Ministry of Commerce, Government of India, there are 659 units operating in eight SEZs currently operating in the different States of India: It appears from the table below that exports from SEZs evinced a marginal 7.5% increase from Rs 8,552 crores in 2000-01 to Rs 9,189 crores in 2001-02, traceable in main due to slowdown in the world economy in the wake of September 11 terrorist attacks in USA.

DEVELOPMENT OF SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONES

SOME IMPERATIVES

QUALITY OF GROWTH OUTCOMES

WORLD CLASS INFRASTRUCTURE

 MEGA PROJECTS
 PROJECT IDEAS
 COMPREHENSIVE INFRASTRUCTURE PLAN

Recent Policy Announcements

Offshore Banking Units: The recent policy announcements by the Government allow Offshore Banking Units (OBUs) in SEZs. Detailed guidelines for setting up an OBU are being worked out by the RBI. This should help some of the cities emerge as financial nerve centers of Asia. OBUs have been permitted to accept funds from NRIs. A key plank of new SEZ policy package is that OBUs are critical for Greenfield SEZs.

OBUs located in one SEZs can lend to units in other SEZs Units in SEZ would be permitted to undertake hedging of commodity price risks, provided such transactions are undertaken by the units on stand-alone basis. This will impart security to the returns of the unit. OBUs in SEZs are also permitted go for External Commercial Borrowings (ECBs) for a tenure of less than three years. The detailed guidelines are currently being worked out by RBI, which will provide opportunities for accessing working capital loan for these units at internationally competitive rates. Banks that have been granted permission to set up OBUs include the State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Bank of Baroda and Oriental Bank of Commerce. The Govt of India have so far cleared ten OBU applications, out of which five are from SBI, two each from ICICI Bank and Bank of Baroda, while one from the Oriental Bank of Commerce. While the first OBU is expected to be operational by June 2003, so far no application is reported to have been received from any foreign bank.

THE CHINESE SEZs

The Chinese SEZs were the result of an effort to decentralize economic reforms as early as late 70’s. Reforms through SEZ interventions began in 1975-78 in China under the stewardship of Deng Xiao Ping. The Chinese SEZ Concept is more about development than trade and deals with specific functions and roles, evolved and perfected over the past two and half decades of Chinese economic reforms:

(a)-to attract foreign capital, advanced technology and equipment;
(b)-to train people in advanced technology to improve productivity;
(c)-to promote competition between regions, between and within trades, with a view to help strengthen the competitive muscle of the overall Chinese economy;
(d)-to funnel foreign exchange by “marketing” the Chinese resource advantage to serve as the gateway for speedy, hasssle-free influx of FDI and foreign exchange into China;
(e)-to gear up SEZs to serve as “experimental models of the market system”; and
(f)-to increase employment, especially of youth from the rural hinterland China, by a deliberate strategic engineering of trickle down growth effects.from SEZs.

Special Economic Zones can be instrumental as catalysts for transition from a planned to market economy. This theory, in fact, employs an interpretation of SEZ that is broader than the common use of the term. It applies potentially to any geographic area that receives one of two particular types of special policy treatments in the areas of taxation and investment. In the case of China, Shenzen, Gaungdong and Fujian can be included in this category. The distinguishing features of Chinese SEZs are their large size, investment friendly customs regime, flexible labor laws, liberal policy for DTA (Domestic Tariff Area) access, attractive package of incentives and delegation of powers in favor of provinces and local authorities for managing the zones.

Although China has adopted many of the policies advocated by Economists, such as being open to trade, a and foreign investment and macroeconomic stability, violations of well established macro policy were also striking. For most part of the two decades (1978-98) China’s reform succeeded without complete market liberalization, without privatization and secure private property rights, and without democracy. One might have thought that in the absence of these “essential” factors reforms would fail.

The Chinese development experience with SEZs indicates that considerable growth is possible with sensible but not perfect institutions, and that some unconventional “transitional institutions” can be more effective than the best practice institutions for a period of time. Specific lessons include: incentives, hard budget constraints, and competition should apply not only to firms but also to governments; reforms can be implemented without creating many or big losers; and successful reforms require appropriate but not necessarily optimal

CHINESE SEZs – A SUCCESS STORY TO EMULATE

If India has any peer group country to compare performance with, it is China, as it has similar size, diversity, demographics etc. Hence it would be worthwhile modeling our SEZ efforts on the Chinese lines. If one looks back at the long-term trends in GDP and Foreign Trade of China and India over the past quarter century, China has made rapid strides and far surpassed India. Secular trend in export performance of China coinciding with SEZ development indicates that global trade of China rose over thirty times from US$ 20.6 billion in 1978 to US $ 620 billion in 2002. Currently a trillion Dollar economy with a substantial FDI inflow rate of US $ 45 billion per anum, the Chinese economy owes its success to SEZs, which have gained worldwide attention.

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THE CHINESE EXPERIENCE WITH SEZs (THEORETICAL PREMISES)

Chinese achieved an amazing transition to virtually a “developed economy” status as the World’s Fastest Emerging Market Economy through SEZ Interventions in just two decades from 1978 to-1997. The man responsible for this great leap was Deng Xiao Ping.
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The Chinese Reforms

In the two decades between 1978 and 1998, China had transformed itself from a centrally planned economy to an emerging market economy, and achieved a nearly 10% average growth. During the period, China’s per capita GDP had more than quadrupled and the living standards of ordinary Chinese people had improved significantly. For instance, per capita consumption had increased four times for eggs, eight times for poultry, the per person living space had more than doubled in the urban areas and tripled in the rural areas, and total household bank deposits as a percentage of GDP, increased from less than 6% in 1978 to 60% in 1998. The benefits of the Chinese reforms. were shared by the people on a broad basis. The number of people living in absolute poverty declined from over 250 million to about 50 million in two decades, a decline from one-third to a twenty-fifth of China’s population. Life expectancy on the other hand had increased from 64.37 in the 1970s to 70.80 in 1996 (68.71 for men and 73.04 for women), with infant mortality falling from over 50 per thousand in the 1970s to less than 30 per thousand in the 1990s. In 1998, the World Bank moved China’s ranking from a low-income to a lower middle-income country.

China’s two decades of market transition had strong institutional foundations. In the first stage (1978-93) (entirely under the leadership of Deng Xiao Ping), the system was reformed to unleash the standard forces of incentives, hard budget constraints and competition, but the underlying institutional forms and mechanisms were far from conventional. Reforming government through regional decentralization; entry and expansion of non-state (mostly local government) (Town and Village Enterprises (TVEs); financial stability through “financial dualism”; and a dual-track approach to market liberalization.

In the second stage, China aimed to build a rule-based market system, incorporating international best practice institutions but proceeded in its own way. Major progress was made in the first five years (1994-98) on the unification of exchange rates, and convertibility of the current account; the overhaul of tax and fiscal systems; reorganization of the Central Bank; downsizing of the government bureaucracy; and privatization and restructuring of state-owned enterprises.

Some Theoretical Insights: The reasons why China’s reforms were not properly understood and appreciated are profound. There are strong prior beliefs, based on existing knowledge of economics, about the kind of formulation (or policy interventions) that a transition economy should use. Furthermore, such beliefs are supported by strong evidence from the failed economic reform in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (FSU) countries prior to 1990 which did not follow the formulation. The theory and past evidence together formed a powerful “conventional wisdom” hypotheses about a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for a successful transition, that is, stabilization, liberalization, privatization and democratization.

Leaving aside the issue of whether they are sufficient from the standpoint of experts on Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union, the Chinese path of reform and its associated rapid growth seemed to defy the necessity part of the conventional wisdom. Although China has adopted many of the policies advocated by Economists, such as being open to trade, and foreign investment and macro-economic stability, violations of the standard policy were also striking. For most part of the two decades (1978-98) China’s reform succeeded without complete market liberalization, without privatization and secure private property rights, and without democracy. One might have thought that in the absence of these “essential” factors reforms would fail.

One of the longest-standing debates in the theory of development economics concerns the relative efficacy of balanced as opposed to leading sector investment strategies for achieving growth. The orthodox balanced growth theory, associated with works of Rodan Rosenstein (Big Push theory 1943), Ragnar Nurske (1953), and Scitovisky (1954), proposes that, due to important economic inter-relationships and complementarities, all sectors of the economy should be developed simultaneously. Subsequent economists formalized some of these ideas in a model in which, unless all sectors move up in concert, fixed investment in any one sector will be unprofitable due to lagging sectors. The most noteworthy opponent of the balanced growth school, Hirschman (1958), also emphasizes interdependencies and complementarities between sectors. Although a developing country might not have sufficient resources to make large investments in all sectors simultaneously, investing in one or a few key leading sectors could have the effect of pulling up other independent sectors.

It is in this context, we should examine the efficacy of the Chinese model of Special Economic Zones, and try to draw lessons. The economic transition of the FSU countries during the nineties faced a number of hiccups during the nineties. This cast a new light on the classical balanced growth versus leading sector debate, raising afresh important questions about appropriate economic policies that effect the allocation of limited economic resources. However, the relatively successful experience of China during 1990s was characterized by a regionally unbalanced development that was concentrated first in the East and coastal regions and later extended to the West and inland. This development reflected early policy decisions to establish several “Special Economic Zones” and “Coastal Open Zones”. These regions gained considerable autonomy, enjoyed preferential tax treatment, and received relatively high levels of resources. However, such strategies remain controversial. Important potential drawbacks include a possibly inefficient diversion of resources, increased regional inequality, and the possibility that other lagging regions could obstruct the process of economic development.

Arguments in favor of the Special Economic Zone development strategy of China include (a)-absorption of foreign investment without involving the domestic economy (ie, the dual track argument); (b)-learning (ie, the experimentation argument); and (c)-strategic economic relations with Hong Kong (ie. the Hong Kong factor argument). Special Economic Zones can be interpreted as possible catalysts for transition from a planned to market economy. This theory, in fact, employs an interpretation of a Special Economic Zone that is broader than the common use of the term. It applies potentially to any geographic area that receives one of two particular types of special policy treatments in the areas of taxation and investment. In the case of China, for example, areas such as the Gaungdong and Fujian provinces can be included in this category.

Pitfalls in Transition: The Chinese SEZ model can lead to certain strategic complementarities between firms, regions, or other economic organizations. If most units in the SEZ restructure (reform) and pay taxes, the government will procure enough revenue to satisfy its political constraint and most probably not increase taxes. On the other hand, of only few units restructure and the others do not, revenue will be so low that the government will succumb to pressure and increase tax rates. This can lead to a bad equilibrium trap that can be counter-productive to the very rationale of the SEZ intervention.

The Rationale of Chinese-style SEZs: This problem entails not only resources for direct state investment, which remains important during the transition period, but also affect the allocation of private domestic and foreign investment. By creating Special Economic Zones that receive a high ccncentration of infrastructure investments that are complementary to local efforts in restructuring, the bad equilibrium trap described above can be potentially avoided. The advantage of investment relative to tax incentives in this context is its irreversible nature involving commitment. At the same time, special tax treatment for Special Economic Zones can be an important supporting policy in these circumstances, even if commitment is imperfect. Therefore, transition strategy might coordinate investment with fiscal policies to strengthen economic incentives when commitment is difficult

According to Stanford Researchers, one of the main lessons learnt was that considerable growth is possible with sensible but not perfect institutions, and that some unconventional “transitional institutions” can be more effective than the best practice institutions for a period of time because of the second best principle. Specific lessons include: incentives, hard budget constraints, and competition should apply not only to firms but also to governments; reforms can be implemented without creating many or big losers; and successful reforms require appropriate but not necessarily optimal sequencing.

THE INDIAN SEZs

India’s SEZs, introduced during FY 2000, represent a more refined version of EPZs. According to FY 2000 Exim Policy, there were seven SEZs with delineated duty-free enclaves treated as a foreign territory for the purpose of industrial, service and trade operations, with exemption from customs duties and a more liberal regime governing trade, FDI and other transactions. Domestic regulations, restrictions and infrastructure inadequacies are sought to be eliminated in the SEZs, with the idea of creating a hassle-free environment for export production.

Development and Marketing of Greenfield SEZs

It is more than three years since the Government announced SEZs as the engines of growth; o far not a single “greenfield SEZ” has come up. According to the Federation of Indian Export Organizations (FIEO), New Delhi, the government seems to be unclear and short-sighted on SEZ policy, as they have accorded SEZ status to almost any EPZ or even Export Promotion Industrial Park (EPIP). For example, an EPIP project in Indore was recently declared as an SEZ. The promoters of Positra (Gujarat) have moved over to Maharashtra and the ambitious Nangunery SEZ project in Tamil Nadu are as yet non-starters.

As per FY 2003 Exim Policy a new SEZ Bill was under finalization by the Ministry of Industry & Commerce, which if approved will constitute a separate chapter in future Exim-Policy statements; but Commerce Minister seem to have softpedalled it for a long time. While State Governments are scrambling to secure SEZs for their States, there are issues like eg. labor laws are not uniform; overall investment climate, then bearish after Iraq war, now the Oct 2008 meltdown will take time to recover etc. The investment climate at least in the short term of next six to eight months till end Dec ‘09 is unclear. Analysts say the Finance Ministry is dragging its feet because SEZs and OBUs are still uncharted waters for them.

Although SEZs afford the best investment option for Income Tax for exemption. According to analysts, large investments into SEZs are unlikely. One basic reason seems to be that the Govt of India have not got the SEZ concept right (as clearly made out in the Economic Times editorial, refer Chapter-III), and not a single SEZ in India can claim that they have world class infrastructure in place for attracting FDI. India has not made any effort to “market the SEZs” as avenues for FDI that creates in turn development impulses with a bias for world class quality. Both the Central and the State Government administrations are lax and groping about SEZ policy, which is being served piece meal without having the “big picture” in view.

Policy makers in Delhi have averred, since there has been considerable erosion in India’s competitiveness in many manufacturing lines in recent years, why not try services based SEZs? Our poor show in FDI of US$ 5 billion compared to the Chinese FDI of US $ 45 billion in 2004, was because of poor infrastructure, and woeful lack of concert in SEZ policy vision and overseas promotional campaigns. It might be a good idea to consider developing tourism-centric greenfield SEZs, as such focused sector-specific thrust can spur the transformation of infrastructure, and create faster multiplier effects.

India is more advantageously placed in tapping the potential of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in speeding up the development and marketing of SEZs, eg. introduction of e-Governance in basic infrastructure, real estate acquisition and construction processes on an all-India basis. Unless a strict, uniform Rule of Law governing these processes is enforced, India will miss the bus, and left far behind. Totally doing away with the current peace meal approach is an imperative. “SEZ Toolkits” based on some of the suggestions outlined below can be developed and electronic media used to promote large SEZs keeping in view the size, scale and scope of tourism-centric activities to communicate with stake holders and targeted audiences:

(a)-Decentralize the State level SEZ Administrations further down into smaller, viable zones

(b)-Identify the SEZs that can be developed in a copy book style on the lines of Chinese SEZs, especially “Shenzhen”, promote and market them with clinical care as “Islands of Excellence”, keeping in view benchmark performance metrics on the lines of Quality of Growth (QOG) metrics, advocated by the World Bank group.

(c)-Role Models: The Government can take inspiration even from countries like Singapore and Dubai where the infrastructure is world class.

(d)-Concentrate on development of tourism-centric infrastructure of just two SEZs, that can compare with world-class infrastructure. In three years time, deem the SEZs as “Primed for International Marketing, and the results will be there to see.

(e)-Scout for the best of advertising and international marketing promotions talent in the world, and assign the job from start to finish to invite, secure and implement FDI in world-class infrastructure projects.

(f)-Open a website, call for research papers and project ideas from public and the entire world of marketing of high profile public places, to suggest projects on infrastructure with some prize money for the projects that best satisfy all the dimensions of the QOG criteria, as enunciated by David Dollar and Aart Kraay, Nobel Laureates in Economics.

(g)-Wait for a three-year gestation period for Infrastructure investments to mature and become operational.

(h)-Launch an aggressive SEZ Marketing campaign showcasing the SEZ infrastructure already available through TV advertizing overseas. In order not to dilute the conceptual issues, the need to keep the “big picture” in view must be emphasized in marketing SEZs, as they will be the enablers for building a world class infrastructure and thereby qualitatively a better all round development of the country.

(i)- The “big picture” in this context refers to “Quality of Growth, with an implicit world class culture as the basic plank. “Quality of Growth“ has an important message to all at the current juncture of economic development of India. A peep into the Chinese SEZ experience with an evaluation of the relative experiences of the two countries presented as Appendix to this Study will shed light on what are the lacuna and where India is lagging behind.

(j)- EPZs-Conversion to SEZs, Is it the Best Practice? Investigating by what measure or criteria the conversion EPZs into SEZs is a sound, if not the best of practices, is an important issue. Converting the existing EPZs into SEZs does not make much sense, the EPZ’s size and infrastructure being a major constraint for SEZ growth on the lines of ideal Chinese SEZ models such as Shenzhen. It is only the customs regime envisaged for EPZs which is sought to be imposed upon them, though not favored by the entrepreneurs in some of the SEZs.

(k)-Improvising with Imperfect Institutions: The Study observes that during the early stages of SEZ development the Chinese too had encountered a complex maze of problems, but waded through by quite a bit of improvisation on rules, imperfect SEZ institutional interface with the rest of the economy, and command and control structures. India too must attempt to go through the drill of institutional R & D as afforded by the Chinese. Unless EPZ entrepreneurs demand a switchover to an SEZ regime, and providing that they satisfy a strict and rigorously evolved criteria for decision choices as between EPZs and SEZs, the decision to convert an EPZ into an SEZ may not be forced upon as a top down decision. China has only five SEZs but a variety of other EPZ type zones, which have a slightly different policy framework.

TRADE DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES

Promotion of SEZs at Sub-National Level: The Govt of India seeks to empower the States by delegating decision-making power to State-level Export Promotion Committees (SLEPC) headed by the respective Chief Secretary. Progressively, the Center's role in export promotion efforts would be brought down and States empowered in this respect. The office of the Director-General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) has launched a drive for drawing up State-wise export data, which would help the process of apportioning funds under the scheme of Assistance to States for Infrastructure and Development of Exports (ASIDE) based on individual export performance. The ASIDE scheme was specifically meant to ensure a bigger role for States in the export promotion effort under which the country is targeted to turn in a cumulative figure of US$ 82 billion by 2007. This Study discerns a sudden surge of interest with politicians and pressure groups lately pressing for SEZ start-ups, almost at random, which needs to be checked. The momentum triggered by SEZs should not plunge the government into pandering to a regime of tax holidays and concessions, creating thereby a major dent in the Central Govt’s exchequer. ICTs and international best practices in accounting standards should plug in any loopholes hitherto bogging down EPZ/ SEZ performance and show a credible, viable growth path for SEZ entrepreneurs, without resorting to devious methods.

Marketing Support: In order to effectively market the SEZs, and having regard to the availability of skills, socio-economic infrastructure, metro-based SEZs should be served from hinterland areas by smaller EPZ type zones, appropriately termed “clusters”, as enclaves of feeder services support. A UNIDO study indicates there are 354 clusters in India, with 34 having a turnover of Rs 1,000 crore or more, and a few with a gross turnover exceeding Rs 10,000 crores. Additional efforts at State/ other sub-national levels would be necessary to communicate the role and importance of SEZs, not as mere export drivers, but as “major economic policy interventions” leading to all round development and prosperity. Toward this end SEZs managements should deepen and widen their interface with the State governments, work in concert as well as structure public-private partnerships with a mutually beneficial stakeholder interest, and make joint bids to attract FDI. The Development Commissioners and Customs officials in the EPZs should get a good understanding of the functioning of SEZs based on face to face interaction with their counterparts in China.

The thrust of SEZs in China was on attracting FDI and Technology, and that should be the prime concern in India too. Such ambitious drive might remain a pipe dream without aggressive marketing and promotion. SEZ managements in China woo investors aggressively. Provincial and local authorities compete with each other to attract investors. India should send delegations abroad to acquaint prospective investors with Indian SEZs and their potential, salient features, facilities, incentives and investment procedures. Indian missions can play an important catalytic role in this regard.

STATE-CENTER – ROLES AND RELATIONSHIS

Unrealistic Policy-making and Administration: The Study reveals that there is little convergence of objectives and strategies between the Central and State governments. As such, policies are short-lived, lack long-term vision, often leading to dilly-dallying when it comes to implementation. With a change of government at the Center every 3 to 5 years, there is a change in stance and perception of policies resulting in lot of confusion among the exporting community. There is then no initiative on their part to increase volumes.

“Although India has traveled some good distance with EPZs as an export-led policy instrument, today the EPZs seem to have lost their relevance and outgrown their utility. They are in no way better off despite all the policy announcements and liberalization measures”. Such remarks on EPZs are a sad reflection of EPZ Administrators in India, and seem to suggest how a successful policy intervention can crumble when there is no good governance. To transform EPZs as more successful ventures, we need adequate financial support for provision of infrastructure and transport facilities, relatively low factor cost, a favorable national framework including guarantee of private property rights, a low degree of tariff protection, convertibility of currency, a stable legal and administrative regime and also single-minded devotion to the aim of making India a full fledged open market by 2005. Setting up of Free Trade Zones/ Free Ports/ Off-shore Banking Units was debated at considerable length for several years.

The Indian government always takes a very short-term view, often gets caught in a fiscal mess, and has no better option but to stall the project. With too many windows in the administrative setup, complications and misunderstandings are bound to arise. Unless and until an overall liberal framework is designed to look into monetary, trade, fiscal, taxation, tariff and labor policies, all other efforts will go waste. India needs an overall policy for infrastructure development. Offshore banking centers, duty free shopping zones, recreational areas and port services are also the need of the day. These services will facilitate an overall healthy growth. India has economic advisors of international repute but implementation is awfully slow. Unless and until labor laws are made foolproof, and removal of monetary and fiscal constraints addressed expeditiously, aping the Chinese model will not be productive. The need of the day is not only EPZs and SEZs, but export-enabling and export-expediting zones as well. These zones should have facilities for storage of goods without customs documentation.

SEZ MARKETING – NEED FOR POLICY STRATEGIC SHIFTS

Export promotion: The Govt of India must promote exports through greater emphasis on export processing zones, elimination of product reservations for small-scale industry, encouragement of the info-tech sector, and elimination of administrative barriers to foreign direct investment. India could have achieved what China has achieved in export growth, but India failed in basic policy strategy. At the center of China's export strategy were the special economic zones or SEZs in which favorable export conditions were assured. These SEZs, along China's coastline, were designed to afford foreign investors and domestic enterprises favorable conditions for rapid export promotion. All key aspects of the export environment were secured. Exporters, for example, were allowed to import intermediate products and capital goods duty free. They were given generous tax holidays. The exporters were assured decent physical infrastructure, often through the provision of land, power, physical security, and transport to the ports, within specially created industrial parks. India too has experimented with EPZs, but India's approach has been one of relative neglect rather than support. While China's five main SEZs have been very successful in exports, attracting foreign direct investment, and creating large-scale employment opportunities, by contrast, India's main export processing zones have not succeeded in any of these areas.

India's EPZs performance at 3.8% of exports compares very poorly with China’s 40%. EPZs have not performed as well as China's SEZs for many reasons, including: limited scale and over-crowding of the EPZs; insufficient logistical links with ports; poor infrastructure in areas surrounding the zones (e.g. unpaved roads and poor physical security); government ambivalence and red-tape regarding FDI; unclear incentive packages governing inward investment, and lack of interest and authority of state and local governments, and the private sector, compared with the central government, in the design, set-up, and functioning of the zones. In China, major responsibility for SEZs rests with local and provincial governments, whereas in India, the responsibilities remain heavily with Delhi. Under these circumstances, many state governments have actually been averse to locating EPZs in their state.

Successful implementation of SEZs would be contingent upon participation of players with relevant skills, availability of adequate financing for the project, and strong support from a stable central government for policy decisions. The basic elements in this regard comprise:

(a)-Ability to attract strategic players, eg.. investors and financial lending institutions as stake holders in the SEZ Project;

(b)-Land and infrastructure development to world class standards;

(c)-Effective marketing of the SEZ project to tenants, both from India and from overseas;

(d)-Operation and maintenance of infrastructure

(e)-Strategic location, skilled labor at low cost, with English speaking ability

Structuring India’s SEZs along the lines of overseas SEZ models can be risky, for, the ground conditions are vastly different in India. Unless a sea change happens in attitudes to free markets and proper regulatory mechanisms are in place, the SEZs too may go down in history like the EPZs have. The time is opportune to take the SEZ challenge in all seriousness and identify the shortcomings/ loopholes in our systems, and establish performance monitoring mechanisms to deal with factors impeding success in world class growth. Toward this end, we might have to scout for role models to emulate, identify the critical success factors inhibiting our performance and put in place immediate remedial measures. India’s experiment with SEZs can succeed only if India is able to attract some of the international giants to shift their manufacturing bases into these zones.

According to a senior Govt officials, until 1991, only Gujarat and Maharashtra were in competition for FDI investments. But now, at least four others have entered the ring. Kerala, not known for its manufacturing sector, could focus on its core strengths of tourism and IT capabilities. However, the tendency of herd mentality in the SEZ development must be checked as the investments involved are substantial, and success or failure can make or mar the prospects of a whole region once and for all. The lesson is SEZs cannot be developed by any entrepreneur who has money. They must be conceived, planned, developed and administered carefully, always keeping the “big picture” in view.

Spin-offs from Tourism-Centric SEZs: If there is one industry that can bring in Quality of Growth/ Life outcomes to India’s quality starved millions that is tourism-driven infrastructure development. Not only does it contribute to FX earnings, but it also brings in spin-offs in terms of quality infrastructure, clean air and environs. Moreover, tourism-centricity can generate faster growth of India’s vast Handloom, Handicrafts, Arts and Artifacts Industry in the hinterland, enhancing the living standards of its teaming millions. India’s rich culture and artisanal tradition can be expressed, promoted and marketed through Heritage / Eco-tourism Sites and High Profile Public Places (eg., Modern Airports/ Conference, Trade and Exhibition Centers (eg., Petronas Tower (Kuala Lumpur), CN Tower (Toronto), Madame Tassauds Wax Museum (London), The Millennium Dome (London) etc. The time is opportune to develop the Mumbai-Pune Region intensively as a Tourism-Centric SEZ.

During the last quarter of the twentieth century, ie, within two and half decades, from Stockholm to Singapore, Helsinki to Bang Kok, Rome to Dubai, most world class cities went through urban renewal which meant a metamorphosis of sorts. The small Island nation of Singapore, a free port in sixties, has exploited its geographic location as a maritime hub of South East Asia, and transformed itself entirely for international trade and tourism promotion under the leadership of Lee Kwon Yew. Likewise both Bangkok (Thailand) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) (under Mahattir Mohammed) have made rapid strides during late nineties, with tourism as their USP.

So what should India do in order to get at world class environs and living standards? What are the business models for developing a pollution-free worldclass infrastructure in India? How do we finance it? What kind of joint ventures we should think of, and what are the contract methods in vogue? BOT/ Public-Private Partnerships etc? Who in World Bank and International Finance Corporation is dealing with these matters? With US$ 75 billion in our FX kitty, do we still need to go to World Bank to secure financing for our infrastructure development plans? Are there any ready-made models to emulate? Some of these issues are discussed below in respect of specific project ideas, which pieced together will constitute the “big picture” that can be of interest to policy makers/ politicians/ venture capitalists / and potential investors in SEZs, State Governments, SEZ Developers, especially infra-structure/ tourism enterprises. The recent Government decision to open up FDI for real estate development augurs well for the country. In such areas FDI should be welcomed with open arms by Governments concerned.

IN THE INTERNET ERA MARKETS ARE SEAMLESS

IN ORDER TO CARVE A TOURISM-CENTRIC SEZ OUT OF THE MUMBAI-PUNE REGION
A NEW ECONOMY COMPANY SHOULD BE FLOATED, HEADED BY A STRATEGIST
WELL INFORMED ON MACRO-MICRO CAUSALITY

THE TOURISM SPIN IN THE MARKETING OF SEZs

Introduction

The next three chapters seek to make out a case for success of SEZs if they are tourism centric. The economic and employment potential of tourism are only too well known. Once the infrastructure is in place Tourism is a low capital, highly labor-intensive business, with a high economic multiplier. Tourism is a business particularly suitable for part-time and seasonal employment, and thus encourages first-time entrants and women into the work force. In general, tourism is an environment friendly activity, as a degraded environment only keeps tourists away. With some imagination and creativity, every state and indeed every province, can focus on a particular niche, in line with its unique strengths, and comparative advantages. India’s up and coming SEZs at over a dozen locations across the country should do well if they could concentrate on infra-structure and tourism.

Here again India is well advised to compare itself with China. About 33.2 million tourist arrivals China earned some US $ 17.8 billion as tourism earnings in 2001. At that level they were already the world’s fifth most popular tourist destination. It is not just China that beats us hollow in tourist arrivals, Malaysia with 19 million, Hong Kong with 13 million, Thailand with 9.6 million, and even tiny Singapore with 6.5 million. All are far ahead of India’s poor 2.6 million arrivals in 2001. The irony is that India with its long coastline, pristine forests, pilgrimage centers and cultural heritage sites ought to have attracted more tourists.

The story is no better when we look at domestic tourism. Official figures on domestic tourists are hard to come by. However, the numbers are nowhere near China’s 784 million in 2001 that netted that country an astounding US $ 42.4 billion. That despite the recent World Tourism Council’s finding that Indians are among the fastest growing travelers in the world. The reason for both cases is the same. The abysmal state of infrastructure in our country. Why would anybody want to visit India when the experience is anything but enjoyable? Strating from the touts at airports and railway stations to exorbitant hotel tariffs, (thanks to luxury taxes on hotel rooms), to pot-holed roads, to poor transport facilities, to power break downs to the general absence of law & order, the list of woes is endless. Unless we address this basic issue of Infrastructure, we will continue to miss out on the opportunities offered by the world’s largest industry, one that is labor intensive to the hilt.

The small island nation of Singapore is entirely geared to foreign trade, and to think of the economies of France, Italy, Thailand or Egypt without tourism is inconceivable. It has therefore been felt that a Study of Special Economic Zones will understand the relationships between tourism-infrastructure-governance so that a closer look be given to examining the gaps and identify corrective measures that would be needed to give a tourism a big push. It must be noted that SEZs and world class infrastructure are inter-related. The spin-offs accruing from SEZs and Infrastructure are highly correlated in the kind of multiplier effects they can bring to bear on the overall economy of the region in which the SEZ is located. Hence the strong accent on this study on infrastructure development.

The Tourism Proposition in the Marketing of SEZs

In light of the foregoing that in order to attract investments in SEZ one must convince the overseas investors that the SEZ has a world world class infrastructure. India’s tourist arrivals declined from 2.6 million in 2000 to 2.5 million in 2001 and further down by 7.2 % to 2.4 million (provisional) n 2002. In terms tourism Dollars, the earnings declined by (4%) from US $ 31.7 billion in 2000 to US $ 30.4 billion in 2001 and by 7.6 % to US $ 28.1 billion in 2002. Maharashtra is low down at sixth place as tourism destination in the country.

Let us consider the list of world class investments we have thought about in Chapter-IV: Priming Mumbai-Pune Region as a Tourism-centric SEZ

PROJECT IDEAS

[A] MUMBAI-NAVI MUMBAI REGION

A-1: Develop a 500 km long Peripheral Corniche to beautify Mumbai’s East- West aswell as the Southern Sea-front

A-2: Develop Modern Rapid Transit Express Ways in Around the Mumbai Island

A-3: Develop a Six-lane Express Way-cum-Rail Bridge on the Arabian Sea from Gateway of India to Elephanta Islands and connect it up with Konkan Railway at New Bombay. Develop an ultra-modern Corniche on the Eastside and New Bombay sea front on the lines of Sydney’s Darling Harbour* [To be treated as a 21-Century Dream Project, showcasing India’s engineering skills, this should reduce Mumbai-Pune commuting time on specially laid MagLev Tracks to just under one hour, and give tremendous fillip to New Bombay International Airport at Turbhe en-route Karjat]

A-4- Railway-cum-Link Expressways Development

A-5: Total Overhaul and Facelift for Railway Stations

[B]- THE LONAVLA-MATHERAN-MAHABALESHWAR REGION

B-1: The Lona Valley Authority

[B-2: Hill Resorts-Mahabaleshear/ Pancghani/ Matheran

[C] - THE PUNE REGION

[C-1]- Development of Pune as the Second IT and Bio-Tech Capital of India

[C-2}-Heritage Tourism, conserving SimhaGadh Fort, creating a Son-e-Lovre spectacle as a tourist attraction, ropeway connecting Range Hills-Parvati-SimhaGadh

[C-3]-Sports Complexes, including a closed roof cricket stadium on the lines of Melbourne Stadium in Australia at range Hills

[C-4]-International Conference and Exhibition Center on Senapati Bapat Marg

In order to market Mumbai-Pune SEZ first and foremost the an SEZ Master Plan should be prepared, It should include the world class infrastructure development and the governance reforms being undertaken to speed up the policy and decision making processes. Apart from prime time Advertizing on CNN, BBC etc, once in every three days, the SEZ authorities should organize conferences and events showcasing the Mumbai-Pune SEZs as ultimate destinations for investments. Participation in The World Economic Forum, Davos (Switzerland), the APEC in Singapore, and inviting the lead members of India Caucus from Houston (Texas), USA will help a long way. Use of Audio-Video media like International Teleconferencing on leading Television Channels, using CD ROMs for publicity materials would be highly effective and recommended in this context.
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[A] - THE MUMBAI METROPOLITAN REGION

Project Idea - [A-1] : Develop a 120 km long Corniche to beautify Mumbai’s East- West Sea-front

Mumbai is an Island City stretching South-North a length of 40 km on the Arabian sea front. Surrounded with a demure Arabian sea-front, the Island city of Mumbai has excellent potential for developing a long Corniche alongside the Western and the Eastern sea-fronts. As one travels from Malabar Hill to Marine Drive, the West side sea front is beautiful. From a distance the Nariman Point skyline dotted by the three skyscrapers, the Air India Headquarters, Express Towers and Oberoi Towers, reminds one of the Manhattan skyline of New York. Except for the Marine Drive ending at Chaupatty beach (called the Queen’s Necklace), the Band Stand, a small stretch of land on Bandra sea front, and the Madh Islands off the Malad coast, no attempt has been made to develop the Mumbai sea-front, not even a Corniche with green promenades and boulevards, neither on the West nor on the East. Even the Arabian Gulf cities of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Jeddah and Manama boast of well-maintained 40 to 50-km long Corniches meandering the Arabian and Red Sea coasts, punctuated by resting points, museums, entertainment parks etc.

To the old timers who came to see the city, Bombay always presented a dishovelled, unkempt look, a sad state of affairs, a mismatch to the image to the city’s image as the Commercial Capital of India. Thanks to the industrial policies of the pre-independence era, quite a few pollution-causing industries that came to be located in the suburbs: from Dadar-Parel (textiles), Koliwada (fisheries, EI-tanning), to Kurla-Bandra to Andheri and beyond further North (garments, travel goods, footwear etc0. It is time that the Government of Maharashtra thought of radical transformation in terms of urban renewal of Mumbai with a tourism-centric bias. Now that industries are moving out lock, stock and barrel, Mumbai’s Metropolitan Development Authority should try to develop a comprehensive urban renewal program.

Project Idea [A-2]: Develop Modern Rapid Transit Express Ways in Around the Mumbai Island

The Corniche alone is not enough. It should be part of an Integrated Project to promote tourism, and attract international traffic to Mumbai-Pune Region. There are some projects on the anvil that will change the landscape of Mumbai’s western sea-front. Construction of a three lane 8-km Bandra-Worli causeway is already under way. The Government has plans to connect Worli with Nariman Point via Malabar Hills, on the lines of the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco. This can be extended further on to Cuffe Parade into the World Trade Center complex on the Southern side, and upto Versova (Andheri) or Madh Islands (off Malad) in the North, so much so people can commute fast and comfortably from Cuffe Parade to the Western suburbs.

Project Idea [A-3]: Develop a Six-lane Express Way-cum-Rail Bridge on the Arabian Sea from Gateway of India to Elephanta Caves Island and connect it up with Konkan Railway at New Bombay. Develop an ultra-modern Corniche on the Eastside and New Bombay sea front on the lines of Sydney’s Darling Harbour*

[To be treated as a 21-Century Dream Project, showcasing India’s engineering skills, this should reduce Mumbai-Pune commuting time on specially laid MagLev Tracks to just under one hour, and give tremendous fillip to New Bombay International Airport at Turbhe en-route Karjat]

The Island of Elephanta Caves on the Arabian sea can be developed as an excellent heritage tourism site. One must think big here. A Six-lane Express way, can be developed as a rail cum road bridge across the Arabian sea, touching the Elephanta Caves Island, and connecting to Konkan Railway at New-Bombay, and thereon Panvel-Karjat-Pune. This region can emerge as the alternative rapid transit route connecting Mumbai and Pune via New Bombay by round the clock Air-conditioned Commuter Trains from the Central Business District of Nariman Point/Cuffe Parade to Pune. Ultra-modern Japanese style Bullet trains using German Mag-Lev Technology (Magnetic Levitation Track Technology) can be used (China has recently done the same) to commute at peak seeds upwards of 250 km per hour so that the Mumbai-Pune commuting time is reduced to just one hour. Apart from speed, an important objective of this new Railway line is to showcase the Mumbai-New Bombay East side corniche and seafront with a new Manhattan-styled skyline, that projects the excellence of India’s achievements to 21 st Century audiences.

Need for a Big Picture: In planning such, mega projects, it is necessary to develop a White Paper on the Big-Picture that a tourism centric SEZ should aim at. So that down the line, during the course of implementation, the big-picture is not lost sight of, create insurmountable roadblocks.

Millennium Gateway Theme: An integral part of this project should be the construction of a new monument, a new 21st Century Gateway of India mounted on a tall, well-lit structure on the Elephanta Island as a special tourism attraction. (A round trip ropeway originating from a New CST Terminal traversing over the outer most tip of Nariman Point via-Cuffe Parade, Afghan Church, Taj Intercontinental Hotel and on to Elephanta Caves. If a worldclass Conference Center, luxury cruiselines and commuter hovercraft facilities across the Arabian sea to New Bombay, and extending thereon to Goa are added, the ambience of a high profile heritage tourism site on the lines of Singapore’s Sentosa Island will have been created that can work wonders for the SEZ. This entails sprucing up the entire Business District comprising the Fort, Nariman Pont, Cuffe Parade, Colaba Causeway, Kalaghoda and the Taj-Gateway of India complex. For tourists site-seeing on a ropeway that traverses in the skies should after all present a clean, orderly, spruced up city. Many of the old Tourism sites of Taraporewala Acquarium, Prince of Wales Museum, Nehru Planetarium, National Center Performing Arts (NCPA) etc will receive tremendous boost in revenues once these sites are inter-connected devolving on the “Millennium Gateway” concept.

A ropeway connecting Bandra’s Pali Hills to Worli’s nearby Malabar Hills (with a feeder ropeway from Malabar Hills, via Mahalakshmi Temple to Haji Ali) to Nariman Point, then to Taj-Gateway of India complex and extending into the sea to Elephanta Caves Island would be a befitting touch up for projecting the Mumbai-city as a sought after tourist destination. Plans are underway to develop the Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) as a Modern New Business District, an International Finance and Banking District (with appropriate legislation and using the Special Economic Zone concept enunciated in this Study, Off-shore Banking Units (OBUs) too are slated to be part of the Mumbai-New Bombay-Pune SEZ. A mega project like this is expected to generate spin-offs in terms of faster economic exchanges, higher labor productivity and wholesome growth of international trade.

(*)- Some International Comparisons

(a)-The Waterfront at Darling Harbour, Sydney

In the modern jet set age, International Conventions, Conferences and Exhibitions not only enable exchange of knowledge, and promoting trade, they can boost a city’s image Darling Harbor, Sydney (Australia), a decrepit industrial area just two decades ago, is one of the most happening tourist spots in Australia. Called “Tumbalong” or meeting place by the aboriginal people, Darling Harbor earned the moniker of “Cockle Bay” from the white settlers because of the abundance of sellfish to be found there. The harbor acquired the name Darling Harbor in 1826 after the then Governor of New South Wales Ralph Darling. By the 1950s,however, Darling Bay was eclipsed as most of Sydney’s port and container traffic moved to Botany Bay. By the mid-1970s Darling Harbor was a series of empty warehouses, rarely used train tracks, and only the odd vessel used its wharfs.

In a landmark decision, the New South Wales Government announced in 1984 that Darling Harbor would be re-built as a waterfront precinct with parks, museums, walkways and the Sydney Convention Center. Most of the area was demolished, and an army of architects, designers and consultants got to work. Four years and an investment of $ 900 million later the new Darling Harbor was thrown open to the public by Queen Elizabeth. Of the total investment $ 300 million had come from the private sector. By 1999, just in time for the Sydney Olympics, over $ 1.5 billion was invested in the new Darling Harbor. It hosts five Olympic sorts- Boxing, Judo, Wrestling, Weightlifting in the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Halls, and Volleyball in the Entertainment Center.

The Centerpiece of Darling Harbor is the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Center (SCEC). SCEC has six halls offering over 27,000 sq. feet of fully serviced exhibition space. In addition, it boasts of over 30 meeting areas in the Convention Center making it convenient and practical for exhibitors and organizers to host associated business activities simultaneously such as product launches, training, corporate entertaining and cause-related market events, conventions, congresses. Built around this area are a series of attractions to keep visitors interested and entertained (Can we, in Mumbai, shift the Indira Docks, lock, stock and barrel to a location down south like Ratna giri, and re-develop the Eastern sea front from Thane Creek-Kurla-Koliwada to Ballard Estate, a spacious 50-acre Garden around the Gate Way of India (if necessary by land reclamation eastwards upto a 5-km stretch into the sea (first to create space for a new Shinkansen (*) (Bullet Train) Terminal – a jetty smack on perpendicular alignment with the Gateway of India, and secondly to develop a beautifully landscaped East-side Corniche. The Reserve Bank of India headquarters and Defense establishments in the vicinity and PSUs (like Mazagoan Docks will be left untouched).

#-Chinese Garden of Friendship: This was designed in China to celebrate the Australian Bicentenary. The garden was a gift to Sydney from its Chinese sister city of Guangdong. It is one of the largest of its type outside Asia, with pavilions, lakes, waterfalls and a Chinese teahouse. The gardens were designed by landscape architects and embody principles dating back to the 5th century.

#-Cockle Bay Wharf: This was designed as the new “in” place to be, with a mix of budget outdoor eating joints, and posh restaurants. A large complex on the city side of Darling Harbor, has given the harbor the much needed boost.

#-Sydney Acquarium: This is one of the largest acquariums in the world with more than 5,000 different Australian fish displayed in their natural habitats. Visitors can “walk on the ocean floor”, through 145 meters (480 ft) of acrylic underwater tunnels.

#-Other attractions include the Sydney Entertainment Center with an eight storey high I-Max screen, Australian Maritime Museum and Harborside Shopping Center with several waterfront areas.

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(*)-The Shinkansen (Bullet Train) of Japan: Before 1964 there were limited means of travel in Japan. One could walk, ride bikes, or take a car. Now there is a much faster and more efficient way to travel around Japan. This is Shikansen, or Japan's bullet trains. Shinkansen was first opened in 1964, to help Japan's transportation system. It has done so very well. Its first line was the Takaido. By then the trains then were already runnig at speeds about 200 km/h. Japan had trouble with its other trains. With Shinkansen, however, the trains were fast and always on time. Now Shinkansen holds the world speed record. Fastest scheduled averarage speed between two station stops was 261.8km/h (164mph) in Japan with the 500 series "Nozomi" between the two West bound stations Hiroshima and Kokura, in March '97. Fastest scheduled average speed starting and stopping stations was 242.5km/h (152mph) again in Japan with the 500 series of "Nozomi" between Shin-Osaka and Hakata, in May 1997. It is obvious how the Bullet Train has helped, not only Japan's transportation, but also its economy. In 1982 the first North bound lines, the Tohoku Shinkansen from Tokyo to Morioka and the Joetsu Shinkansen to Niigata, were completed.

Every year Darling Harbor stages a series of colorful festivals, comprising Darling Harbor Jazz festival, Circus and Street Theatre Festival, Darling Harbor Fiesta and Winter Music Program, and Summer Holiday Program.

Spin-off Benefits to New South Wales: Since its re-development, Darling Harbor has developed into an important area for leisure, culture and business. Besides its many commercial attractions, it offers a wide range of public areas for cultural activities, festivities, community events etc. and has attracted over 150 million visitors, almost a quarter were overseas visitors. Darling Harbor employs over 4,00 people and earns over $ 600 million in revenues. With an average annual descent of 1.3 million tourists visiting this ultra-modern precinct, the hospitality industry around Darling Harbor received considerable boost. There are in excess of 2,700 rooms available in Darling Harbor, ranging from the five star Hotel Nikko now called Four Points by Sheraton Sydney (the largest hotel in Sydney with 649 rooms) to the three star Aaron’s Hotel, which include serviced studio apartments such as the 216-room Center Mercure Apartments. With about 700 events organized round the year, Darling Harbor’s hotel notch healthy occupancy rates of 85%.

The Darling Harbor Management Company works in partnership with many groups to present a variety of other special events such as: Carnival, Christmas Pageant, Gold Sunday, Lantern Festival, Australia-Chinese Day, World’s Longest Buffet, Waiter’s Race, Sydney Festival and Destination one. (Perhaps MTDC and NGOs like Bombay First should take a cue from Sydney’s Darling Harbor and press for such tourism-centric SEZ in Mumbai-New Mumbai-Pune (to be christened as SWEMZEN) (a la SHENZEN of China).
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[A-4]- Railway-cum-Link Expressways Development: The setting up of Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation (MRVC), and the merger of Central and Western Railways under a single entity MRVC augurs well for tourism within the Mumbai metropolitan region. With the merger, Mumbai can develop its railway system and handle its traffic flows in an integrated, seamless and hassle-free manner, emulating the London Metro in this regard.

Recently the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA), Mumbai has announced the taking up of the Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP) in a big way. Financed by the Govt of Maharashtra, Govt of India and the World Bank, the MUTP Project, which envisages public private partnerships (including those with the NGOs), has announced launching of the following ambitious projects:

(a)-Improving travel comforts by optimizing the existing railway network, adding new lines, and introducing new technology 12 coach rakes.

(b)-Efficient East-West Road links, improved traffic management around the railways stations, improved pedestrian facilities;

(c)-Conversion of DC to AC system for suburban trains

(d)-Less crowd in coaches;

(E)-Rail over bridges at Jogeshwari, Vikhroli and Kurla

(f)-Station Area Traffic Improvement Schemes at Dadar, Andheri, Malad, Borivali, Ghatkopar, and Chembur

(g)-State-of-the Art Traffic Signal System for the Island City (Around 250 junctions)

(h)-Procurement of 500-eco-friendly buses for BEST

(I)-Construction of a number of pedestrian subways, foot overbridges and footpath improvement.

(j)-Removal of 20,000 encroachments on the road and railway corridors.

(k)-Rehabilitation of 19,128 households affected by MUTP.

The MUTP is planning to undertake as many as -- East–West Link Road projects in the bustling Metropolitan Island City of Mumbai. An important dimension in these mega projects is again quality of project planning and execution. This is discussed in the next Project Idea in conjunction with improvement of Rail stations. If India has to proudly showcase at least some of its infrastructure as world class the time is now to put the act together. Be it in respect of railways stations, ports, railways expressways, the time to start with a world class quality accent is now. The project however should be part of the Mumbai-Pune SEZ plan, so that the big-picture is available. Thus while planning mega projects for Railways, it is necessary that reputed Tourism Development consultants be involved, A multi-disciplinary group can contribute better keeping all the technical, environmental, popular points of view. Against this background the following Railway Project Ideas have been mooted to be treated as part of a Medium to Long-term MUTP Projects stem list.

Total Overhaul and Facelift for Railway Stations

Most Mumbaites have endured the dirt, stink and squalor of the same old decrepit dungeon like Victoria Terminus, Byculla, Dadar, Kurla, Thane, Kalyan and Bandra, Andheri, Borivali, Virar railways stations for ages. In fact they did not receive a single facelift worth the name for a half a century now. Now that Mumbai has a separate Railway zone for itself, it should be in a position to undertake major facelift operation for all these railway stations, keeping the “big picture” of world class in view:

(a)-CST Terminal: Without disturbing the heritage structures of the old Victoria Terminus, a new Millennium Dome like structure can be erected to make CST look a New York Grand Central replica. There are specialist Architects and Designers like Norman Foster, London (UK), whose core competence is design excellence for high profile public places. In a CNN interview, they showcased themselves as pioneers in the field, with achievements like the British Airports Authority (BAA) new office complex at Heathrew. A bustling 8-storey Shopping Mall-cum-Car Park, on the lines of Millennium Dome in London can be constructed on the land area covered by CST and its neighboring precincts covering the existing suburban and up country train terminals, the reservation office area, the bus terminal, the jumbore of shops and pavement vendors transacting business opposite CST.

(b)-Project visualization and design skills represent critical success factors in this Project. The cooperation and participation of all the Vendors/ Shop keepers in the vicinity, enjoined into Public-Private Partnerships with Bombay Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (BMRDA), can be enlisted to form a corporate entity. A large Circular Dome like structure can be thought of encompassing the area and including the Head Post Office upto DN Road, Fort, Times of India to adjoining subway and basement complex South by South-West. The current subway at CST chokes with 100 percent probability of spread of “SARS” like diseases during peak times.

(c)-The covered Millennium Dome, which will have a user priced entry ticket (to be operated by smart cards), will serve the dual purpose of CST exit and entry into a Shopping Mall, that will have ultra-modern design features. As in Airports, the arriving and departure traffic will be segregated by separate entry points Level-1 (arrivals) and Level-2 (second floor for departures), with basement reserved for a car park, and Bus Station with access and exit points to the Head Post Office, Ballard Pier and D.N. Road, tightly guarded by security staff. When passengers arrive, they will be stepping into a cool air-conditioned first level of the Dome, with escalators moving up and down, into the ambience of an ultra modern shopping complex, with a pleasant fountain at the center. Why dies India need all this? A pen pushing, cost-cutting bureaucrat may question. Yes, India wants to be there at the top of the charts in quality life, and Bombay First must gird up its loins to get this done. Level 3 to 8 will be the Shopping Mall with all services, facilities and wares, including Banks, FX vendors, Flower Vendors, Gymnesia & Healthcare facilities, Bowling Alleys, Restuarents, but few reputed brands of eating joints. The top floor of the Millennium Dome should be connected by a ropeway to facilitate appropriately user priced tourist travel across to Indira Docks and Gateway of India to Elephanta Caves.

(d)-Gateway of India to Elephanta Caves-A Heritage Complex: The Indian National Trust for Art & Cultural Heritage (INTACH) has been at the center stage of culture and heritage shows on a few occasions at the rock-cut caves of Elephanta. Both INTACH and the Archaeological Society of India are keen on promoting Elephanta as a world heritage site. INTACH was planning to have a museum, a nature park (with a wet land park) and a cultural center. An Indo-French Partnership called “Partners in Conservation” comprising among others, the Taj Group of Hotels, Air India, BNP Paribas, and Baccarat (last two are French) had a proposal to spruce up the Gateway of India, which along with the Apollo Bunder Area is a notified heritage precinct. Besides some polymer-based quoting required by the walls, the Gate Way structure requires some repairs minor superficial repairs. Here again, the projects appear to be just floating around and forgotten once the sponsor’s events are over.

(e)-Unless conservation of heritage sites upgradation and spruce-up are planned as part of a bigger and integrated tourism or city development plan, the decision makers and invcstors put it on the back burner and lose sight of the project idea. It therefore becomes important that projected ideas are invited from public, assembled and put on a website for public comment. Based on that Project promoters/ venture capitalists can be invited to develop public-private partnership proposals for development and maintenance. In this context, Singapore’s Jurong Bird Park, and Santosa Islands Tourist resorts offer excellent examples of public private sponsors. Tourism entrepreneurship lies in identifying and tapping the opportunities based on what the people want. Jurong Bird Bank has veritable list of sponsors, accredited sponsors, trustees etc. and India Tourism promoters should try to take a leaf out of Singapore’s book in this regard.

(f)-Blueprint for Mumbai Development: Bombay First, an NGO Initiative of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry, working in tandem with Government has roped in McKinsey & Co to prepare a vision statement for the megalopolis (now to include the proposed Mumbai-Pune SEZ, SWEMZEN stretching from Mumbai-Navi Mumbai to Lonavala -Matheran-Pune-Sinhagadh-Mahabaleshwar. The Bombay First Initiative, supported by almost all top corporates in the Island city as well as the Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC), the State Government and BMRDA is being planned to make the city liveable. By 2010, Mumbai will have about 27 million inhabitants, becoming the world’s second most populous city after Tokyo. The manufacturing sector will no longer be the city’s main employer. Increasingly services sector will be making inroads in what is considered to be one of the rapidly changing happening cities of the world. “Mc Kinsey Co will be dealing with ways to transform the Mumbai into a worldclass metro”, said S.S. Bhandare, CEO, Bombay First. A forward looking plan taking Mumbai’s development upto 2013 will be prepared by the Consultants. The Report will be looking into special areas of the city’s growth and ways to channellize investments, and is slated for submission by June 2003.

(g)-The Church Gate Railway Station too, which is already constructed as an Office complex, can be vastly improved using the intersection at Eros theater, the heritage site wherein the Western Railway. For 2020 tourist convenience, the Church Gate Station will be a ropeway de-tour point for those disembarking to get on into Western suburban commuter trains. A tall spacious 50-storey Office cum Railway station complex that covers the entire station front area covering the four-road Churchgate junction would relieve the congestion within the Churchgate station. Upto three stories over the ground level plus basement of this hexagonal building can be reserved for car park, and Level 4 to 10 can be department store-cum-shopping complex. An important aspect to be kept in mind here is that as in the case of CST Project, the height of the station roof should be increased at least by 20 % so that the millions of commuters passing by the railway station will have lot more free and less polluted air. Like the Heathrew Airport’s Train terminals, Indian Railways should install large-sized Air Circulators (to clear the polluted air), Escalators for the old and infirm and handicapped people to move in and out without any problem.

(c)-Dadar and Kurla Terminals:. Both the stations need drastic re-alignments, renewal and modernization. With CST reaching a saturation point, there is a proposal to develop Kurla Station as an alternative to take on more train traffic. A Rs 16 crore proposal to expand Kurla Station is under consideration, as also the expansion of the Westside of Tilak Nagar Terminal, by adding new railway lines. Here again, the big picture and a vision 2010 and 2020 needs to be kept in mind before going ahead with investments. Kurla station will eventually be aligned with the expressway development and connected to the new business district being planned at Bandra-Kurla Center (BKC). All most all the busy suburban Railway Stations from Virar to Borivali to Andheri, to Bandra on the Western Railway, and Dadr, Kurla, Ghatkopar, Mulund, Thane, Kalyan on the Central Railway, and Chembur, Deonar -- all these stations need total redevelopment and modernization. And most stations lend themselves for development into modern shopping complexes. What is required is imaginative design and engineering skills to drastically transform them into ultra modern, high profile public structures, to be cherished as tall edifices of modern Indian design and engineering skills..

(d)-By 2020, the existing railway lines would have been overused, and asking for renewal. Unless alternative railway lines are developed across the Arabian sea connecting Taj Intercontinental Terminal at the Gate Way of India to New Bombay via Elephanta island, the City will be choked with insurmountable traffic problems, and the existing railway corridors will be virtually unable to handle the traffic because of the vertical urban growth that is already underway in the Island city. With changing times, comfort level afforded to passenger public should also be upgraded. And that can be done only the way it is done in Washington, the world class way.

(e)-What kind of facelift for Millennium Dome at CST: As one steps on the escalator at the south entrance of the Dupont Circle Metro-station in Washington, and moves down the escalator tunnel, passengers are treated to a sensory explosion, and artist’s creativity is given a free hand. By the installation of 45 moving lamps at the bottom of the escalators and on the ceiling at the entrance to the mezzanine, gold light is projected to look like stars danced among cobalt and purple constellations. As one moves along on the escalators, a soothing flash of yellow, violet, purple, orange and the seven colors of a rainbow lights, the drabness of uniform concrete is gone thanks to a gift from Helsinki (Finland) bringing a psychedelic ambience to the precincts, shower the passengers to soothing delight as the descend into the underground terminal area. The lamps, which can project 2000 colors, are intended to mimic the arora boralia, or northern lights, a natural phenomenon of moving arcs of colored lights celebrated in Finland. At the bottom of the escalator near the fire equipment closet, a computer played recordings of Finnish song birds. According to artist Luukela, “the birds, the sound of nature, gives a certain feeling to this concrete place. Light art is big in Finland, light affects a person’s life” she said. It is time that Indian railways spruced up the Railway stations and got their act together to introduce such innovations to the millions of Mumbai passengers who have been undergoing the torture of train travel over the past 55 years of independence.

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[B]-THE LONAVLA-KHANDAL-MATHERAN-MAHABALESHWAR BELT

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Project Idea [B-1]: The Lona Valley Authority

(a)–A separate regional tourism authority, called the Lona Valley Authority can be created as a public-private partnership or as a joint venture with an overseas hospitality / leisure tourism promotion group to develop tourism in Lonavala – Matheran - Mahabaleshwar belt. The Sahara Group of companies are already there in Lonavla with their sports and entertainment complex under their brand “Amby Valley” The reason for christening this project idea as Lona Valley is to promote brand equity to Mumbai-Pune Express way on the lines of Santa Monica Highway between Los Angeles (LA) and San Diego in California, USA. In fact the surrounding area is also called the Silicion Valley of LA.

(b)-The Lona Valley starting from Karjat to Khemshet can be a separate eco-zone for pollution free businesses like Information Technology Parks (100% EOUs), Offshore Banking Units, Bio-Technology Parks, Gem and Jewelery Parks and Floriculture. The tourist attraction of Lona Valley can be considerably enhanced by setting up a New Space Age Planetorium, a Madame Tassaud like showcase of the great Indian Celebrities of the yore as well as the all time Bollywood Greats The cool climes of Lona Valley also holds attraction for a Universal Studio and Disney Land (LA) style of tourist resort –cum- entertainment complex. There will be good number of takers for such ventures if only they are promoted by an appropriate agency like Lona Valley Authority (LVA), which again can be a public-private partnership. The LVA should see to it that quality and environmental standards are not compromised.

In this connection, it is not out of place to mention here that the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) issued on January 17, 2000 an MOEF Notification under the Environment Protection Rules of 1986 outlining the boundaries of the eco-sensitive zone as well as strict measures to regulate development and industrial activities within the zone.

[B-2]-Hill Resorts

The Mahabaleshwar and Panchgani Plateau: Hailed as a big victory to the environmentalists and the Bombay Environment Action Group (BEAG), which has been battling for long to save the Mahabaleshwar and Panchgani plateau -- the source of five rivers and one of the best surviving hotspots of Bio-diversity in the Western Ghats – from being crushed by the juggernaut of reckless development. The BEAG expects that this trail blazing notification will soon have to be extended to other hill stations like Matheran, Chikaldhara, Panhala and Khandala in Maharshtra, Panchmarhi in MP, and Munnar (Kerala), Kodaikanal, Ooty (Tamil Nadu), Darjeeling, (West Bengal), Simla (Himachal Pradesh), Kurseong (Sikkim), Dalhousie (Punjab), Landsdowne and Kasauli (Punjab). According to the Notification, “the eco-sensitive zone shall include the entire area within the boundaries of the Mahabaleshwar Tehsil and the villages of Bondarwadi, Bhuleghar, Danwali, Taloshi, and Umbri of Jaoli Tehsil of Satara District. A Master Plan for the Eco-Zone demarcating all existing forests, green areas, horticultural areas such as strawberry farms, raspberry farms, orchards, tribal areas and other environmentally sensitive areas is being drawn up. No changes in the land use pattern from green uses such as horticultural areas, agriculture and floricultural parks will be permitted in the Plan.
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[C]- THE PUNE REGION
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[C-1]-Pune the Second IT and Bio-Tech Capital of India: Pune is emerging slowly but steadily as the second IT capital of India. A unique mix of history and tradition dating back to medieval India, earned Pune its present status as a seat of higher education and intellectual excellence with the sobriquet “the Oxford of the East”. After Bangalore, India’s IT capital, Pune is gradually becoming the host city attracting a number of Fortune 500 multinationals in IT and Bio-technology. Pune’s youth are entrepreneurial and are trying lots of innovations in ICTs and solar energy. There are several NGOs in the city sensitive to civil rights and citizenship that a modern city should afford. The Hinjewadi Information Technology Park, C-DAC, NIC, International University Center for Astronomy and Astro-Physics (IUCAA), and a unique constellation of Defense R&D Establishments, -- it is but appropriate that the reach of Pune’s intellectual capital will eventually extend far and beyond into the Lona Valley. And Pune will be in the forefront of design and development of the Mumbai-Pune SEZ plans.

[C-2}-Heritage Tourism in Pune: Pune boasts of a sun-e-louvre spectacle for the Sanivarwada Fort precincts to commemorate Shambhaji. Pune, however, has neglected the great SimhaGhad Fort constructed by Chtrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the great Maratha King of the 17th century. The Fort is dilapidating and the approach road is narrow and far from safe. It is time that Maharashtra Tourism Development Authority develops and implements a Master Plan to revive the glory and heritage of Shivaji Maharaj. The Pune Development Plan was recently critized by the civil society for its tendency to encroach and eventually making it a haven for builders to exploit it to the hilt in a haphazard manner. In this connection, Pune can think of pr-empting such moves by a CN-Tower like structure on the Range Hill (near the University), with a ropeway extending from there to Parvati (which means the entire stretch of the city from the Ganesh khind Road (University Circle) to Senapati Bapat Marg, Bhandarkar Road, Deccan Gymkhana to Parvati should be spruced up by PMC. And PMC can take a leaf out of what is happening next door in Hyderabad, how the city is geared to get a mid-night wash under Chandra Babu Naidu administration.

[C-3]-Sports Complexes: If India has to reach the status of a sports superpower by 2015 at least, Mumbai-Pune should aspire from now on to stage Olympics in this up coming Megalopolis. There are quite a few vacant spaces in the city crying for funding and development. The decrepit, unkempt sports stadium behind Ambedkar Bhavan, the Deccan Gymkhana etc to mention a few. There is good scope for developing a closed roof cricket stadium in the vicinity of Range Hills if only the Government is serious in granting the land for this purpose. The Stadium complex can be developed on the lines of Melbourne’s cricket stadium in Audtralia, and a velodrome for cycle enthusiasts, preparatory to showcasing Mumbai-Pune as an Olympics venue in 2012 can also be developed.

[C-4]-Airports/ Cargo-Hubs/ ICDs etc: Quite a few project ideas on the above lines can be conceived to position Pune, apart from Nagpur as an international cargo-hub. The Inland Container Depot (ICD) at Dighi is a step in the right direction. A new International Airport should be away from the Lona Valley (locations like Talegaon may not fill the bill), because Mumbai will soon have a new international airport at Turbhe. Once Panvel is connected with Karjat (a project that needs to be implemented as a priority as a fast track (Mag-Lev) railway line to take on bullet train type super fast commuter trains, the distance between Mumbai-Pune will eventually reduce to just one- and half hours. From the standpoint of traffic affinity and in keeping with projected growth in the Region when fully developed as a Tourism-Centric SEZ, the Pune–Chinchwad region needs an Airport of its own. If it is away from Talegaon, it will open up opportunities for the catchment areas East by South East of Pune, which is agriculturally rich for promoting a Cargo-hub based on horticultural (Ratnagiri Alfonso Mangoes and floriculture products.

About DarpanaLABs-PraxisPolaris

2009-05-13T06:43:00.023+05:30

Sunvistas

Professional experience (35+yrs) in India and the Arabian Gulf in the fields of International Trade and Marketing Research in national/ supranational organizations, corporate stints in Swedish MNCs in India in light engineering industry, EOUs in Bulk Commodity Exports, and in economic & financial research in a Gulf-based international Airlines major--, all have afforded me on the job corporate management experience (micro), and good exposure to “macro” economics. In recent years Indian Corporates, besides Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), have learnt to appreciate the importance of environmental scanning, as also trying to comprehend the impact of "big Picture” in a globalizing environment.

It was not until mid nineties, -- whence may I say, I had had a headstart as Specialist (Economics & Finance) with an International Airlines major in the Arabian Gulf, and an opportunity, thereat in Saudia, to study the nature and causes of the "miracle" of Asian Tiger economies of South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia vis-a-vis the Saudi Arabian economy --, that I had developed good interest, albeit on sidelines, in Development Economics. Post retirement, lately, since Feb 2000, I have had a chance to foray into some development research areas, in main: (a)-The UNDP Milennium Development Goals; (b)-Poverty Reduction through Gender Empowerment (eg., Transpolars), (c)-Tourism Centric Special Economic Zones in India, (d)-Application of Information & Communications Technologies (ICTs) in Knowledge Management for Development (KM4Dev), (e)-e-Governance et al, with two International Conference Papers to my credit.

The great depression of the Nineteen thirties was one of the worst that happened to the World economy in 1930s. It severly tested and strained its resilience over a prolonged 13-year period, culminating in the Second World War (1939-43) that happened ten years after the onset of the great depression of 1930s, and remorselessly impoverished the great economies of the West viz., USA, Britain, France, Germany, Italy. Sir, Winston Churchill, the war time British Prime Minister, had a bitter pill to swallow, whence by 1944, the British Economy, in the aftermath of Second World War, as it headed to its logical culmination of victory for allied forces, was in utter shambles. This prompted British intellectuals of the likes of Sir John Maynard Keynes (the 1936 Nobel Leaurate in Economics, for his seminal treatise on "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money") write yet again. In an audacious bid calling a "spade a spade", that war expenditure represents an enormous waste, a huge deadweight, Sir J.M. Keynes authored another book on war economics titled "the Economic Consequences of Sir Winston Churchill" which won accolades from all over the World.

Those were the times when no one in the world had the benefit of modern Information & Communications Technology (ICTs), yet people communicated across continents and understood each other's view points. In contrast to the "old unhappy far of times and battles long ago" (William Wordsworth's Solitary Reaper), man finds succor in wealth, more wealth, more and more endlessly, -- "greed, like a bottomless pit" for cornering wealth and appropriate all the natural resources under the command and control of one single powerful super power eg., USA (Oil) and now China, allgedly buying up the World's Uranium resources). Yes, the pole and polarity of the world situation with regard to resources oil, metals etc is quite stark, forewarning the possibilities of class wars. Doomsdayer prognosis this ? No. At no other time is the role of Supranational Organizations like United Nations is more important and critical to world peace and stability than now. Although Bretton Woods is passe, the much debilitated UN is again looked upto to provide leadership and guidance (thanks to great leaders and visionaries like Barrack Obama) in resolving the newer problems surfacing on earth in relation to: for eg., identification, production, extension, expansion and exploitation of natural resources. Information when processed and dished out consistent with consumer needs is knowledge, and knowledge is "power".

Analyzing the "praxis of the poles and polarities" in all their myriad hues and dimensions in the emerging world that is inexorably hurtling into a fast-paced "Information Age" is a challenge. Lest they do not sweep the entire world off its feet like a tsunami, there should be a "saefty net", a "shock absorber", "ever ready and primed" to bringing about some semblence of order in what seems to be a complex web of dynamic fast changing economic contextualities and corresponding relativities of poles and polarities, micro and macro, impacting peace and the world order (stability of equilibraing forces and outcomes in a churning process as it were). Implicit in the subject "PraxisPolaris" is a pervasive embrace of socio-politico-economic interface. Yes complex indeed it is. Where there is chaos and turbulence, a "cut and sue" approach to bring about order is needed. An analogy to draw upon here is the Calcutta metro under construction. Indeed it is one of the main tasks I am seized with in every discussion on my blogsite DarpanaLabs-PraxisPolaris. May I submit here that even to the extent the faultlines impacting each pole and polar contextuality, could be correctly identified without any analyst bias, that, in my mind, should be enough for others to take on the leads, and offer possible solutions.

The PraxisPolaris Concept: The current international financial meltdown is gradually heralding a new era whereby a strong, emerging India, "well-oiled" and largely "decoupled" from dependence on the Western "domino effect" for prosperity and growth is emerging. It has been my cherished ambition to communicate with the “GenNext” as well as with “thintanks” via the InterNet, -- and perhaps, even better by way of Blogs. India is right now on the cusp of a high growth trajectory; at cross-roads sort of. And how we, as a nation, should respond to the unfolding national and international economic situation at this historic juncture is, inter alia, the prime task of my interactive Blogs on DarpanaLabs. To start with , therefore, I have chosen four thematics close to my heart viz., (a)-e-Governance for Quality of Growth (QOG) and Development, (b)-Politics, Democracy and e-Governance; (c)-Self-Help Groups and Micro-finance; and (d)-Gender Empowerment for Peace and Disarmament.

Development by Design and Contextuality: I believe the areas identified above lend themselves to innovative business modelling with an international flavor and outreach. Given the endowment factors, patterns of politico-economic behaviour, -- be it of nation states, sub-nationals and/ or local community dispensations --, depend on experientials (viz., levels of acceptance/ satisfaction with delivery mechanisms for each given (or articulated) contextuality of development needs), that must be weighed and tested, given the kind of political economies such individual development entities are placed in Democratic, Socialistic, Totalitarian (Monarchic), Single Commodity-based, Land-locked, Small Island nation states et al. And in large pluralistic democracies like India, Russia, Brazil, and possibly Australia and South Africa, I believe that development outcomes can be better managed, provided policy makers are alive to “the rational expectations of the polity”.

Development by Design and Contextuality: Policy makers should be sufficiently sensitized to ground realities, be positive and optimistic with a conviction that, within the framework of everything that is good, including possibly e-Governance, there exist “Oases of Excellence”, elusive and unknown, in what one may see in, and, perhaps construe, the existence and dynamics somewhat of abstract phenomena viz., the “Pole and Polarity of Power Structures”, universally and severally. Seasoned thinktanks and intellectuals can perhaps discern some of the "deterministics" in this welter of abstractness. Such distilled wisdom, -- analyzed at the right time (with contextualities duly identified, coded and channelled into Policy Interventions (PIs) --, can help secure "development dividends" in terms of: (a)-capacity building and preparing the developing nations for faster growth outcomes, locally and regionally; and (b)-usher in "steadying effects " to facilitate what are perceived by thinktanks and/or powers that be as “wholesome quality development outcomes”. If captured and archived, the Development by Design and Contextualities approach can potentially offer scope for use of "Value Engineering", "Statistical Design of Experiments" techniques et al. Such thinking, besides leading us to new "hunting grounds" for research in development economics, will facilitate an enabling environment, where we can try and postulate hypotheses for "Quality of Growth Outcomes".

The basic premise of "Contextualities" is that there are no "One-size-fits-for-all" solutions to development. They embrace "spatial" and "temporal" parameters, and, as a rule, must combine both the supply side and demand side issues suitably captioned and coded for their proper, accurate identification. Among important hunting grounds for research of this genre comprise, inter alia, perfecting "Development Tools catering to "Prognostic" as well as "Diagnostic" situations in terms of each Treatment-to-Outcome, inter-related in a Matrix situation as it were" as applicable to a given set of Development Design paradigms (or what one might say "contextualty"). There seems to be good scope for using statistical "Design of Experiments Techniques" like randomized blocks, lattice square design etc. to fathom the inter reationships. In this context structuring the Development Tools across a wide spectrum of subjects in developinment economics, and tying them in with each Policy Context (let us recap here that the concept of "Micro Impact of Macro Economic Policies (MIMAP)" propounded by the International Development Research Centre, Canada is an important challenge). Toward this end I am veering round to the view that given the prognosis of development issues even in a limited context is fraught with complexity of sorts, it is better to leave the issues so identified and cast in neatly structured contextualities for others to take on the search for solutions. Considering the need especially for linking primary anaytical outcomes up the value chain to "value-added solutions" capable of leading to "Quality of Growth" outcomes, perhaps a separate web portal (if not a blogsite) is necessary for this purpose.

My Focus in DarpanaLABs

Darpana (Sanskrit) is "Mirror": My Blogs seek to focus wherever possible on the qualitative and quantitative benchmarks of socio-political economy of the world in general, and India's pluralistic society in particular, mirroring peoples’ aspirations and expectations in the myriad facets of Vividh Bharathi, and explore the potential not just for development, but also sustainable Quality of Growth, and the kind of political-economies that could best serve the purpose at various levels, together with respective contextualities thereof. I am trying to get a feel of what I intend doing with my blogs by having them followed on select sites that have a Governmental and/ or international canvas. Based on feedback, I propose to enhance and enrich the content of my blogs for future research endeavours. In respect of parameters like transparency (meaning governance with integrity, purity and probity, benchmarks characterizing as necessary pre-Conditions for facilitating good Governance. At this juncture, the praxis of deploying appropriate e-Governance techniques and methodologies, thereby facilitating the consruction of delivery mechanisms as outcomes of this process are important for me.

At times some eerie philosophical/ mythical insights envelop the kind of blogging ambience I tend to generate. My Blogs on “DarpanaLabs-PraxisPolaris” are conceptualized in the mold of a Kali Manthan, shall I call it the “Churning in Kali Yuga” (sort of “seperation engineering" in the modern socio-politico millieu). Incidentally, there is a village in India by name Kali Manthan. The kind of churning or manthan that General Elections '09 has set in is upheavalistic. Separating "good and bad" as the outcomes of a churning process (in a separation engineering exercise as it were, inasmuch as I used to learn about the same, on the job, at Alfa Laval (India), Pune). The PraxisPolaris processes, I have in mind, are'nt manmade. Once they get set in motion, they are irreversible, as nobody (no single mortal or power group) can wade through the swirling momentousness of cross currents, rudderless as they might have to be --, can stop the force of dharavauhini (flow of f into a bigger confluence of streams. Imagine the force of Niagara Waterfalls (it is God's creation !).

An important daily chore after early morning bath observed in all humility and devotion per chaste Hindu saampradaya is regular recitation of the vedic sloka "Gangecha Yamune, Krishne, Godavari Saraswati Narmade Sindhu Kaveri Jaleasmin Sannidhim Kuru". All of ancient India's (Akhand Bharath's)'s jeeva nadee nadamulu -- right from the triveni Sangam of Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswati (the Antarvahini), to the Sindhu, Narmada, Godavari, Kaveri and Brahmaputra all in full flow--, as the prestine Bharatha Jatheeya Jeevana Dhara as they were, impart a purifying effect to the Society at large. Those who have not observed this chore yearn for this purifying effect. The so called Indian Political League (IPL) as it was nicknamed during the General Electons '09, is a very happening, natural, polarizing phenomena separating truth and falsehood, and. mirroring what is good and bad for the country. When in full play, the Praxis Polaris (PP) phenomena is capable of generating tectonic shifts unawares and indeterminately with an instant, stunnig suddenness (imagine "defractionation" in a hefty thousand GIG computer?). Stupefying, implosive, like the detonation of India’s first nuclear device in 1974, unleashing “people power” in all its enormity, hitherto dormant and unknown. Such shifts may leave some in a "Stupor" and make them realize how much of "mortals" we all are.

In the ancient times, vedas and upanishads explained the people power phenomenon. For example, in the "Taitareeya Upanishad", the origin and evolution of man, his relationship with nature's five elements and his pancha indriyas, along with relative cause effect relationships governing them were clearly delineated. Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of our Nation, espoused in his own inimitable style that people power lay in concentric circles within the man (Aatma Ram) himself. In a brief footnote narrative, Swami Paramahansa Yogananda of YAGODA SATSANGA SOCIETY OF INDIA, Ranchi, in his "Auto biography of a Yogi", elucidated, "Man's body battery is not sustained by gross food (bread) alone, but by the vibratory cosmic energy (manifest in the word "Aum"). The invisible power flows into the human body through the gate of medulla oblongata. The sixth bodily centre is located at the back of the neck atop the five spinal "chakras" (Sanskrit for wheels) or centres of radiating life force (chaitanya). The medulla, the principal entrance for the body's supply of universal life energy (Aum), is directly connected by "polarity" with the Christ Consciousness centre (Kutastha) in the single eye between eyebrows (Bhriguti)., which is the seat of man's will power. Cosmic energy flowing in via the chant of Aum, rejuvinates the mortal body by storing it up in the Seventh centre, in the brain, as a reservoir of infinite potentialities (mentioned in the vedas as thousand-petaled lotus of light). The Bible refers to "Aum" as the "Holy Ghost" or invisible life force that divinely upholds all creation: "What ? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" - I Corinthians 6:19 (Bible).

In zeroing in on Praxis Polaris (PP) as the fulcrum of my Blogging platform, my aim is to show that in a large democracy like India (of over one billion people) how the complexity of under currents and cross currents of the "dhara" of people power crisscrossing the country represent an ever changing kaleidoscope, an ever evolving phenomena of poles and polarities, that cannot be comprehended and controlled by manual interventions: such as vote banks, social engineering or deliberately "targeted", "calibrated" policy prescriptions, however powerful a provenance they may have been originating from . For example, those who are used to exerting political muscle via large monoliths, those who boast of a wide reach and grass roots level presence with private armies etc. to support them, will certainly be in for a surprise,. They can't beat what is said in Purusha Sookta ("Sahasra Seershah Purushah Sahasraakshah Sahasrapaath") described in the Vishwa Roopa Sandarshana Yoga of India’s greatest and holiest of religious scriptures ”The Bhagavadgita”, which is an integral part of the great epic "Mahabhratha", also called : "Panchama Veda"

What can be more democratic? or may I pose is geometry so deterministic ? The entire universe and the surrounding cosmos is full of geometry. The praxis of "Nine-point Circle" and the “Polar and Polar" theorems in pure geometry (my father's pet theorems), seen together, seem to aptly describe the current political under currents, the Indian Political League and of the "upheavalistic churning" (manthan) represent a purifying, elevating process separating the good from the bad (evil) every time elections are contested. An optimist to the core, I believe that good always prevails over bad, and in any struggle, in the long run, the eventual outcome will be akin to a "Manthan", separating the wheat from the chaff, men from the boys, as it were. It does considerable good for the country and it should work wonders engendering a more honest, peaceful, God fearing, and, last but not the least, a "balanced, forbearing society" that has, after undergoing eight hundred years of alien rule, has patiently taken on yet again, another 60+ years of secular divides of sorts (history may say it is a kinda tyranny!), continual strife and turmoil, thanks to an intrasigent neighbour.

TRANSPOLARS [Transnational Gender Mainstreaming for Peace and Disarmament]

2009-04-10T18:43:00.009+05:30

Sunvistas

Synopsis

In the aftermath of terrorist attacks in America (September 11, 2001), the entire world suddenly plunged into a slough of despond, seized by a virtual doomsday scenario including the threat of possible nuclear and biological wars. At no other time, the world got so starkly polarized into opposite camps. War or peace is too heavy a burden to be placed on one government, -- albeit a super power, one organization or even for that matter on one sex. History is replete with instances where women have brought to bear a steadying effect on the socio-political processes, sobering down potential flashpoint situations that might escalate into large-scale conflicts and wars Sustainable peace cannot be achieved if the plight of half of humankind is ignored.

Peace can prevail if women participate fully in peace processes addressing primarily prevention of wars, conflicts and violence and, were it inevitable, raise appeals through international fora to voice their concerns and articulate their viewpoints relentlessly. There is thus a gender dimension to war, peace and disarmament. There are several research studies on gender, but the gender dimension in peace and disarmament has received limited attention. Study of gender perspectives particularly in the context of the current war against terrorism and the unfolding socio-political dynamic affecting South Asian womenfolk might provide answers to some of the world’s chronic conflicts.

An attempt is made in this blog to stimulate debate on the all important subject of "Gender Mainstreaming" potentially capable of affecting more than 50% of humankind. I owe most of the ideas placed herein on Transpolars to a Research Proposal prepared for Post-doctoral Research submitted by my cousin Dr G. Lakshmi for a Fellowship with the Woodrow Wilson Center, USA in 2003. Her research was set out with a view to focusing on "gender perspectives in women's movements against war and militarism" gleaned from the then current events supplemented by those prominent in world history, and synthesize contrasting Oriental and Western perceptions of current happenings, especially in the Middle East and South Asia, with a view to chalking out an agenda for sustainable peace and disarmament initiatives at the global level.

An integral part of my Cousin’ Project was development of a “Conceptual Framework for Gender Mainstreaming keeping in view the international ramifications, based on an analyses of social, political, psychological moorings of the nation states and societies in conflict in these regions. The hypotheses, frames and constructs on transnational gender mainstreaming were to be discussed and field-tested among leading International Organizations, NGOs, thought leaders and opinion makers. The information collected was to be collated and put in the form of a Report, and finally to be placed on a website on "Transnational Gender Mainstreaming Initiatives". Part of the Research follow up was an Agenda that sought to instituionalize "Transpolars" at designated supra national levels within a more decentralized regime of UN Regional Structures and Civil Society.

The Rationale of Transpolars

Modern world spins on wheels within wheels. Bretton Woods is passé, and it is time that world’s enlightened leadership eschewed what may be termed "cobwebs of time warp" in the UN Security Council. As also covert proclivities evinced by successive US Administrations to showcase and demonstrate their paramountcy in world economic and political affairs. The hypothesis of the research project devolved on the assumption that that there might be nothing deterministic in a "Pole and Polar" approach to issues concerning Gender, Peace and Disarmament. A glimmering hope, however, was that it might show the way to bring about a semblance of order from bottom-up, instead of top down, in a chaotic world of international relations via Transpolars, conceived as a supra national turf even if they were at a decentralized Regional level. If a calibrated approach can help conceptualize a framework and agenda for a peaceful multi-polar world order via the Transpolars (Transnational Gender Mainstreaming Initiatives for Peace and Disarmament), -- that, in my opinion, can help billions of the world’s poor, deprived and underprivileged women who wade through abject poverty, their daily predicament in the present day turbulent world, and secure for them a modicum of dignity and honor in their lives.

The Setting: Very soon India is going to polls in April-May 2009, whereat 542 aspiring Law Makers representing a billion strong population go to hustings. The avowed promise of 30% reservations in parliament is still a pipe dream in India. The March '09 G-20 Meet in London points to the emerging scenarios of a multi-polar world. I take this opportunity to use this blogspace to take a peek into the struggle for gender empowerment in general, and in India in particular, project analytical perspectives and insights, and test some hypotheses that would pave the way for institutionalizing Transpolars as Supra National Organizations to tackle the problems poles vs polars in matters of far reaching importance such as ethnic cleansing, inclusion vs exclusion, religion, secularism vs theicractic govts, in a large democracy like India. And at an international level, explore ways and means to place a concrete agenda for peace, disarmament and containing terrorism.

Introduction

The need for Women’s involvement in every aspect of conflict reconciliation and reconstruction has caught the imagination of peace activists the worldover post Sept 11, -- post the Afghan liberation from Taliban, and later with the American onslaught on Iraq. The USA's gungho vows, arrogating for themselves as the self proclaimed leader of the free world, and even going to the extent of disrupting international Law and Order to bend a much demonized Iraq to its knees, is viewed by most third world nations as “belligerence” that undermines the very authority of the United Nations. Can the United States, with an overhang of myriad internal contradictions of culture, race, color and gender, cope with the kind of complexity engendered by its self-proclaimed role as the World’s unchallenged, mighty super cop.

Economic, Socio-Politico-Psychological Issues: In recent years the United States had habitually embarked on war missions (particularly Kossovo and Iraq), alone or in collaboration with its NATO allies, ignoring the rules of the game as a world leader and an enlightened signatory of the UN Charter. The world’s poor as a result are witnessing an inexorable drift in their fortunes. Powerless and voiceless, they are resigned to repeatedly falling into a “slough of despond”, certainly not their creation. Why does USA behave the way it does? Are the world’s democracy high priests and idealogues fatigued with the “tyranny of its tradition? If not, why is the total lack of concern for the fate of millions of the world’s poor and underprivileged? How much of US economic and geo-political interests, and baggage of interventions in conflicts anywhere and everywhere in the world are at stake? Or, is it "masculinity", pure and simple? At this juncture, the arrival of President's Barrack Obama as a rising star on the World's political firmament deserves to be hailed as a beacon of hope.

Disarmament is not an end in itself: It seeks to advance the cause of international peace and security, -- of people, first and foremost, thereby of women -, which in turn frees enormous human and economic resources for more productive uses in society. This is a cause that eminently resonates in Nobel Laureate Dr. Amartya Sen’s words, “the afflicted world we live in is characterized by a deeply unequal sharing of the burden of adversities between men and women. Sustainable peace could hardly be achieved if the experiences and perspectives of half the world’s populace were not given the attention they deserved. Only a pluralistic view of gender, and a “new agenda for action” can help combat gender inequality manifesting in myriad forms. It is time that a “gender dimension in peace and disarmament” got incorporated in the UN Charter.

The Transpolars

Can a confluence of “Transpolars”, the “Gender Mainstreaming Initiatives or (GEMINIS)” as we may call them, trigger an “Osmosis” of thought processes from the “Orient to Occident”, from the Southern to Northern hemisphere, and articulate a “Role Playing Effect”, perhaps for America to relent from its seemingly untenable position as a major player in international relations, and the politics that go with it. Could a sustained process of such a “Reverse Osmosis” anchored in gender mainstreaming from a Southern provenance, and capable of communicating and educating the G-20 of the need for tempered wisdom in playing by the rules of the game. What lessons should the “international community”, and the world polity at large, learn from humanistics, HRD and other behavioral sciences, in order to develop and assimilate deferential respect for a ”Gender- prompted Credo” into their collective conscience?

In the modern globalized world of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), there is a felt need to assimilate and articulate the combined effect of international opposition to nuclear weapons, ethnic conflicts and border wars stemming from the profligacy of affluence and penury of economic deprivation (degenerating into gender exclusion, often raising an ugly head in international terrorism). Can regional level supra-national institutions such as “Transpolars” as enunciated below, become a rallying point for crusading action worldwide by womenfolk? How could such an effort be meaningfully organized? The “pole and polar thematic” hypothesizes “GEMINIS” as an institutional answer with an international mandate, invested with a vision and missions for propagating non-violence, peace and disarmament from grass-roots to supra-national levels. Such a vision might show up as a silver lining of hope in this regard.

Poles & Polars: If the “Pole and Polar” geometry is systematically applied in all its conceptual rigor to causation of the ebb and tide of the alternating war and peace time turbulence in a rigorously defined “conceptual framework”, and seen through a socio-politico-psychological lens as it were, some light at the end of the tunnel might be visible. The super powers, present (G-8) and emerging, (G: 8+7 = 15) dominantly from the North at present, are the poles, and clusters of up and coming, developing nations engaged in trade and economic cooperation with the G-8 are the polars. South Asia, accounting for more than a fifth of the world population does not have a separate UN Economic Commission, subsumed as it is in the larger, heterogeneous Bangkok-based ECAFE. Success in South Asia’s poverty alleviation is a litmus test for the credibility, sincerity and objectivity of US and UN Policy interventions.

In fact, Pole and Polar phenomena of sorts seem to manifests within entities at sub-national levels as well. Devolving on the pole and polar concept will be “Transpolars”, organizations with a pre-assigned gender mainstreaming vision, with mission statements acting as “Global Compacts”. Such cross functional supra-national institutions should enable, undertake, oversee and facilitate propagation of gender participation in peace and disarmament decision-making at local and national level. Consistent with the collaborative approaches in vogue in the modern ICT era, “Transpolars” will spearhead “Networks of Communities of Practice” worldwide in this area. Comprising essentially elected Representatives from the Public, Private sectors and the Civil Society, they will be assigned with a remit to create, build and nurture partnerships/ trusteeships with similar organizations to strengthen research, lobbying, and advocacy of gender issues, organized across national boundaries, uniting women activists from regional epicenters (Geminis) around a common agenda typically focused on role of gender in human rights, war, peace and economic policy issues.

Thanks to ICTs, womenfolk are getting increasingly sensitized to the need for enablement and participation, from the Panchayats (of India) to “Loya Jirgas”of a renaissant Afghanistan, seeking to broadcast their voices on a hitherto unprecedented scale. Certainly it is time that the United Nations or some independent “Transpolars” outside the UN ambit had assessed objectively the economic consequences of President Bush’s 8-years as President of the World’s most powerful democracy, and the unimaginable backlash of pain and deprivation his decisions have caused to US public in general, especially to womankind. Can ICTs germinate bottom-up a series of gender mainstreaming and empowerment processes akin to “Reverse Osmoses” cited above and strengthen the “GEMINIS” as the "Polars" of an enlightened world polity.

The Politico-Psychological-Economic Context

Internal security considerations post Sept 11 apart, the US ignored the UN, and vowed to topple Saddam Hussain may be analyzed in a politco-psychological imbroglio created by nation states (what with a host of personalities, thinktanks prodding them, some vehemently opposing "Regime Change" ). A para from “Beyond the Chains of Illusions”, Eric Fromm, Philosopher-Psychologist, Heidelburg, Germany, quoted below might aptly summarize the political psychology of US military adventurism in Iraq:

“A powerful political leader may conduct a policy which leads to war. He may be motivated by a wish for his own glory and fame, yet he is convinced by his cohorts that his actions are determined exclusively by his patriotism and his sense of responsibility to his country. In all these instances, the underlying and unconscious desire is so well rationalized by a moral consideration that the desire is not only covered up, but also aided and abetted by the very rationalization the person has invented. In the normal course of his life, such a person will never discover the contradiction between the reality of his desires and the fiction of his rationalizations, and hence, he will go on acting according to his desire. If anyone would tell him the truth, that is to say, mention to him that behind his sanctimonious rationalizations are the very desires which he bitterly disapproves of, he would sincerely feel indignant or misunderstood and falsely accused”

In April '03 UK’s Economist Newspaper said, “A regime change of the sort Mr. Bush has in mind for Iraq might re-write all the rules of the oil game. President Bush’s new friendship with Mr. Putin also heralded an important change in the geo-politics of energy. The second Bush to take on Saddam Hussain would probably be long gone from the white house before the oil markets are transformed by Iraqi oil. Don’t write off Saudi Arabia, OPEC, just yet!” Yet another perspective on terrorism, purportedly with a human rights angle, asserts that,“Bush Administration’s restrictions on the rights of suspected terrorists implies that its assessment of the balance between protection of the terrorists’ civil liberties and the public’s right to liberty from violence has been skewed to favor a “tyranny of majority”. However, the effects that Bush Administration’s actions might have had on the probability of renewed terrorist attacks must be considered in the rationalization that, “Terrorists have always banked on slow moving evidentiary procedures in the courts to evade justice. Bush Administration may have saved thousands of lives through its illegal actions, a benefit that more than offsets their illegality or encroachment of civil liberties. American liberalism has always put life first, before liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Americans ought not to die because of die-hard liberal ideology” (Mitchell Langber, USA).

The Praxis of Polarity: Not to be construed as undermining the rationale or political correctness of US foreign policy interventions, what with war clouds hovering in the sub-continent becoming a daily predicament --, the current situation in both Middle East and South Asia, home to more than a third of humanity, warrants a comprehensive, in-depth Study of the dynamics of Gender, Peace and Disarmament. A basic postulate of this Research is that socio-political structures devolving on a multi-polar praxis are inherently “self-evolving” (rather than “ministered” from outside) in view of the "concentric nature" of regional epicenters of a vibrant, tautly matrixed web of world influences that can be theoretically compacted as emanating from within a nine-point circle. Going by the analogy of the nine-point circle theorem, Washington will be the circum-center, and each of nine points on the circum-circle represents smaller regional poles, sustaining own power from respective polar epicenters, which owe their allegiance to the Regional Poles. Scaled down, each of the nine points of the nine point circle theorem, will be regarded a Regional Poles (i.e., circum-centers within their own spheres of regional influence). The Regional Poles can be centrist, can tilt to left or to the right. Despite globalization, assuming points clustered on the polar loci evince a normal distribution, the cycle of prosperity and depression can then be less volatile, bound within a "range" of predictable limits at the Regional Polar level. A socio-politico-psychological dimension such as cited above is important at the Regional level. Such a structured view of globalization may not be exact or deterministis, Mut the concept is worth a try.

Interwoven into the Pole and Polar concepts, colllectively termed hereinafter as "Praxis-Polaris" will be lessons in world peace and security to be drawn from “socio-politico axioms, precepts and conceptual frames” of yester years; and in today’s world they must emerge bottom-up. “Concentric Circles”, "Decentralized Village Republics" (by M.K. Gandhi, eulogiged as the “apostle of peace and non-violence” by Lord Mount Batton, the last British Governor General of pre-independent India), “Small is Beautiful/ Scott-Bader Cooperatives” (E.F. Schumacher (USA), “Pancha Sheela” espoused by the five Asian leaders of the early fifties, Jawaharlal Nehru (India), Chou en Lai (China), S.W.R.D. Bandarnaika (Sri Lanka), Unu (Burma) and Dr. Sukarno (Indonesia) at the Bandoeng Conference, Djakarta (1955)--a perusal of the socio-political environments impacting the course of world affairs those times provide insights and perspectives to enunciate and finetune our current take on Praxis-Polaris (pole and polar concepts) of international relations, and help sharpen our vision for Transpolars.

Post World War-II, while science and technology brought out sea changes in the international balance of power, there may still be time-tested tenets of international relations that hold true even in today’s changed times. The resulting synthesis, firstly, from the principles of world peace and international relations of those times (e.g, Pancha Sheela, enunciated at the Bandeong Conference (1955) by India, and supported by Eastern and South East Asian Nations; and secondly, from an analyses placing it in juxtaposition with a stem-list of issues from the current unipolar world order, might help discern realms beyond “totalitarian, monolithic vs decentralized democratic political orders/ structures”. Such analyses would help identify “institutional structures” for “Transpolars” capable of facilitating more decentralized bottom-up decision making in the UN, with the "Regional Poles" affording an “Interpenetrating Arc of Security” bringing to bear a tempering effect on potential flashpoint situations that may escalate into regional conflicts and wars, building in checks and balances in war-time and development synergies in peace time. This may sound utopian with quite some conceptual jamboree to wade through, but complexity can be dealt with by modern technology, especially the ICTs. The Praxis-Polaris framework espoused herein gains added importance for India in the evolving pulls and pressures of power equations emerging amongst Nations aspiring to go nuclear in the foreseable future.

The Gender Dimension

Gender Advocacy: Women constitute nearly half of humanity. Each conflict and consequent peace-building is different and must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. Factors such as gender, religion, class, nationality and race come together in different ways. However, it is possible to identify certain aspects of conflict settings that are marked by a significant gender dimension. In a recent UN Seminar launch of the publication “Gender Perspectives on Disarmament”, Jayanta Dhanapala, Under Secretary General, UN Department of Disarmament Affairs, exhorted that disarmament simply cannot, and must not, turn a blind eye to the aspirations, interests and ideals of half the humanity. A forthright and unambiguous manner of advocacy of gender concerns had echoed when he said that the benefits of progress from peace and disarmament, “global public goods” craved for universally, must percolate to women directly, and ought to accrue in socially and politically accountable ways. Despite the short shrift meted out to womenfolk in many developing societies, they have achieved a pride of place in the peace firmament, as evident from the fact that as many as ten Nobel Peace Prize winners till date have been women.

War-time Impact: Conflicts have a significant and direct impact on women's lives. The burden of hardship often falls disproportionately on women, regardless of nation, community and class. The latest example in this regard is the plight of Tamil civilian population in the LTTE war zone in Sri Lanka. (Read the Times of India article appended below titled "Brotherhoods - Bush Men and Cave Men" by Ms Ritu Menon, India. While all civilians suffer when war breaks out, it is women and girls who face most risk and danger -- raped or sexually assaulted at the hands of powers that be, or abused, women need protection as they represent the most valuable national assets. Women are the hidden persuaders providing the soothing touch of love, compassion and dignity in preaching morality to war ravaged societies; they no doubt are tender articulators of national values, bearers of future generations, yet most vulnerable to "defilement" and susceptible to "assimilation" by aliens.

What is Gender Empowerment?

Gender and Disarmament linkages are not immediately apparent. Nor has there been much specific research on the gender perspectives of disarmament. The approach outlined below, a product of close collaboration between the Department for Disarmament Affairs and the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) of the UN Headquarters, was the first attempt at making these important connections. It represents a different angle on the traditionally complex and politically sensitive fields of security, disarmament, non-proliferation and arms control. The issues of disarmament remain the same; looking at their gender dimensions casts them in a new light and can suggest effective and sustainable solutions.

Gender Mainstreaming was established as a global strategy for promoting gender equality in the Platform for Action at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Although there were clear mandates on the need to incorporate gender perspectives into disarmament activities, they have not yet been translated into practice. It is important that the United Nations provide leadership in bringing relevant gender perspectives to the center of attention in disarmament affairs.

Gender Mainstreaming is defined by ECOSOC Agreed Conclusions 1997/02 as “the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programs, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women's as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programs in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality. It is hoped that this packet provides impetus for increased gender mainstreaming on disarmament questions of vital and urgent interest to everyone

Oases of Excellence: Right from the medieval times, the staple of women power in India is enmeshed in strong traditional bonds traceable to “family” as an institution. Indian women strived to transform local, national and global communities through non-violent means. Tolerance, love and sacrifice, traits archetypical to Indian womenfolk is a differentiating factor in social change and reform. They helped generate invaluable social capital conducive to propagating the Gospel of peace and non-violence.

Objectives of this Research

(a)-Women’s activism in peace campaigns in the post second World War era, documenting the socio-economic, socio-psychological and political factors that explain the similarities and differences with a view to mainstreaming gender concerns and their advocacy as an integral component of economic, peace and war time endeavors >>Women the worldover and India in particular offer a number of examples of women’s activism in peace campaigns. There are several instances of peace movements spearheaded by womenfolk from other parts of the world. This Research seeks to document and highlight the role of gender in peace movements, including enablement for averting/ containing the threshold of imminent wars/ conflicts, relative to South Asia (India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in particular). The United States’ Interventions in Conflict Resolution and Peace Processes as time tested tools in providing succor from pain and suffering, and “affording the limits to refrain” that can rein in propensity for terrorism and militarism, including the relatively unnoticed “domestic violence” haunting the modern world.

(b)-Explore paradigms linking Gender and Governance for development and peace based on a US vs Indian (expand it later to a South Asian ethos), and assess the scope for replicating successful initiatives integrating gender concerns into peace and disarmament processes>>In a recent essay, titled “many faces of gender inequality”, the Nobel Laureate Dr. Amartya Sen maps out gender disparities in terms of seven inequalities, viz., Mortality Inequality, Natality Inequality, Basic Facility Inequality, Professional Inequality, Ownership Inequality and Household Inequality. Unless these inequalities are ameliorated paving the way for gender mainstreaming, a vast chunk (more than a quarter) of humankind will remain in the oblivion, shut off permanently from participatory democratic processes.

(c)-Developing behavioral constructs, based on a study of differentiating factors in the South Asian and US gender perspectives, for assimilation into a “Peace and Disarmament Credo” for future generations >> Women and women's organizations can be effective social agents to resolve strife and conflict. However, their potential in this regard remains dormant and underutilized. Historically the Orient has a prolific record of women participating in peace movements. While the American womenfolk adopted peace (and disarmament) as an end in itself, Indian women demonstrated the same in their support to non-violence, a means to an end. This Research will identify the historical, cultural and social processes that helped sustain stable, peaceful societies in USA and India over the past six decades since World War–II, and develop behavioral constructs for assimilation into a “credo” for priming the mantle of disarmament and peace.

(d)-Recommending methodological process frames with a Gender Ethos for Disarmament, Demobilization and Re-Integration and incorporating the same into a “Conceptual Framework” >> Democracy, development, gender equality and peace are inter-related. A deferential respect for the same is endemic in the Orient. Armed conflicts not only maim and kill soldiers and civilians, but also can ruin national economies and set back development goals. While Bosnia and Kosovo offer test cases in this respect, the current War on Terrorism acquires added significance particularly because women have endured far too long a period of suppression of basic human rights. The role played by American and South Asian women peace activists in “Disarmament, Demobilization and Re-integration” processes, and mechanisms to integrate such processes into a “modus operandi” for mandates/ decisions on war, disarmament and peace-keeping in the twentyfirst century, perhaps through web-based fora, and eventually institutionalizing the same will be an important part of this Research.

WOMEN’S SELF- HELP GROUPS

2009-04-10T18:41:00.007+05:30

WOMEN'S SELF-HELP GROUPS IN INDIA - PROSPECT AND RETROSPECT

Sunvistas

Overview

The past two decades have demonstrated the growing role of SHGs in advocating women’s empowerment Long before the Beijing Platform for Action identified access to credit as a critical contributor to women’s economic empowerment, micro-credit – defined as “credit for the poor without a collateral” – was established as a mainstream development intervention. The World Bank has set a target of reaching 100 million of the world’s poorest people with micro-credit by 2005, and has placed micro-credit at the center of its global strategy for poverty alleviation. SHGs Abroad: Typically underpinning the evolution of women’s SHGs the world over is a pronounced “voluntary” element”.

Micro-Credit Empowers: In most developing countries, where poverty is endemic, the emergence of women’s SHGs is traceable more to a pervading need to combat poverty to deliberate policy interventions. Bangladesh's Grameen Bank, one of the micro-credit pioneers, serves 2.4 million borrowers among the poorest groups, of which 2.28 million, or 95 percent, are reported to be women. Some 90 percent of the Country Women's Association of Nigeria's 1,26,000 poorest borrowers are women, while 65 percent of the Caribbean Confederation of Credit Union's 4,00,000 poorest clients are women. Among other notable efforts are Rating Credit Unions in Guatemala; "Papa" and "Mama" Cards in Zaire; Mobile Banks in Western Africa; FlashCash - a form of finance in Cameroon; Women's Bank in Sri Lanka; production credit for rural women of Nepal; and Money Shops in Philippines, and more recently “Courier Services on Bi-Cycles” back home in Tamil Nadu. Prominent among the internationally recognized SHG success stories is the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh pioneered by Mohammad Yunus, who started it with an experimental project in Chittagong in 1983. Later on, several NGOs had taken up micro-credit as a central strategy. Fuelled by the World Bank-sponsored micro-credit summits, the potency of micro-credit has grown to a point where it is being hailed as the ultimate answer to poverty and underdevelopment. To its proponents, micro-credit has everything – participation, flexibility, community ownership and, best of all, women’s empowerment. To its critics, it is a Band-Aid solution to poverty, an easy way of side-stepping structural issues and making the poor responsible for finding solutions to their own problems Poverty is a multi-faceted problem, involving finance, food supply, housing, infrastructure, education, health & hygiene, war, politics, self-regard and more. Poverty thus has a ”domino effect” as a women’s issue.

“There can be no one single solution to poverty” is the major conclusion emerging from a Survey (April 2003) prepared by the Sub-Committee for Eradication of Poverty of the NGO Committee for Social Development for the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). Many issues must be addressed and a variety of approaches made to eradicate poverty among the peoples of the world. An attempt has been made in this Paper to explore the problems of women SHGs in India in the contemporary socio-politico-economic milieu in which they operate, and strategize solutions for sustaining such groups.

WOMEN SELF HELP GROUPS IN INDIA

"Self-help” and “micro-credit” connote a magic mantra in gender empowerment discourse today. Almost every non-Governmental Organization (NGO) worth the name in India has a micro-credit tie-up where major donors including national financial institutions are involved. Woman power in India has primed Self Help Groups (SHGs) as effective platforms for economic and political empowerment, bringing womenfolk together to protect their legitimate rights as well as fight for social causes. Formed from time to time over the past two decades by NGOs, these groups draw support from national schemes such as the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh, the Indira Mahila Yojana and other poverty alleviation programs, or from bilateral and multilateral donors including the UN Agencies and the World Bank. In certain states, -- notably Andhra Pradesh, women’s SHGs, -- majority of them initiated under the Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (DWCRA) program --, are now the vehicle of choice for the implementation of all major government programs at the village level.

Success Stories: There are several success stories of SHGs enabling women’s economic empowerment in India. Out of an estimated 70,000 women SHGs in the country, a total of 35,000 women SHGs are reported to have credit linkages with banks through micro-credit schemes. Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), Ahmedabad, “Lijjat” of Shri Gruha Mahila Udyog in the early 1970s, Annapurna Mahila Mandal and the Working Women’s Forum in the 1980s, demonstrated the feasibility of small loans to support miniscule ventures set up by womenfolk from weaker/ marginalized sections of the society. Syndicate Bank's Pigmy Deposit Scheme corporate involvement in providing credit linkages so vital for success in this noble endeavor of women’s upliftment through SHGs. The Development Support team working in Pune supports more than eighty SHGs - almost 2,000 women. Yet their success can be measured, not by the money saved and lent, but by the family and community problems shared and tackled, and the confidence gained through self-help mechanisms.

Experiential Learning from Women’s SHGs

(a)-SHGs serve as effective platforms for enhancing the community stature of women in poverty and priming socio-political recognition for them at the grass-roots level.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Rome is an active player in promoting SHGs in developing countries. Experience under IFAD-supported projects in South Asia has shown that empowerment of women stems not only from the financial aspects of group operations, but also from:

• the community aspect collectively ensconcing SHG members as a cohesive social force affording them a socio-political status

• the social moorings of the SHG as a forum for discussing shared problems; and

• the political power for implementing joint action.

(b)-Access to cash and direct dealings with banks confer an overall societal strength, a sense of self-confidence and self-reliance spurred by a feeling of self-worth amongst womenfolk. Inasmuch as self-worth enhances social empowerment, it simultaneously triggers a craving for participation and involvement in socio-political processes at the grass roots community level.

An example of this type of experience was evident in IFAD-supported Maharashtra Rural Credit Project. In the village of Garade in Maharashtra, women's groups have played an important role in banning the sale and consumption of alcohol and chewing tobacco. Before the ban, the bulk of the meager family incomes, which should have gone towards meeting necessities like food, shelter and clothing, were instead being spent on alcohol and tobacco. When legal measures did not work, women's SHGs organized several morchas (sit-ins) at the local liquor stores and forced them to close down. The SHGs pressed for ban on sale of gutka (chewing tobacco) sold in front of the local primary and secondary schools in their village; borrowed money to buy up and burn the village's entire stock of chewing tobacco. Thus participation in resolving community social problems increases a sense of social responsibility among rural womenfolk and gives them required initiative and courage to take a proactive leadership role on community issues. Such outcomes represent a positive step toward building small pockets of “social capital”, raising womenfolk from being a mere targeting mechanism in development projects, which might otherwise tend to be dissipative.

(c)-Sustaining Marginalized Women’s Participation in SHGs is Problematic, But Sensitizing and Empowering them into Community Leadership Roles is Challenging

Women under the IFAD-supported Tamil Nadu Women's Development Project discovered that their membership in the group increased their self-esteem and helped them deal with intra-family injustices and inequities, and even with domestic violence. The groups also became a problem-solving forum where women could discuss and act on common problems. Developing a cadre of women leaders and sensitizing people’s organisations are the need of the day.

(d)-SEWA Bank is Best Practice Institution of International Repute: Internationally, the SEWA Bank is an inspiration for Women’s World Banking (WWB)

The Chairperson of SEWA Bank, Ms Ela Bhatt, is also the Chair Person of this International organization. The bank has contributed directly in achieving, to some extent, the larger SEWA members have their own hand-carts, sewing machines, looms and tools of carpentry and black-smithy to work with. Many of them have upgraded their skills and expanded their businesses. For example, vegetable vendors who used to sell their products with baskets on their heads and now have their own little street-corner shops with a municipal license. The SEWA Bank, innovative in many ways --organizationally, institutionally, financially with important contribution in encouraging women to participate fully in all phases of banking, lending and saving activities, has targeted its efforts not just towards the "symptoms" of homelessness or poverty alleviation, but also on structural causes, including long-term capacity-building of the poor women and their institutions.

(e)-SHGs in Andhra Pradesh (AP) – A Major Government Initiative: Women’s empowerment is one of the prime strategies adopted by the AP Government The socio-economic dimension of self-help through savings is emphasized by women SHGs in AP, where it has caught on as a mass movement.

AP, the leader in Women SHGs: With about 3.95 lakh SHGs covering nearly 53.6 lakh poor women, AP alone has about half the SHGs existing in the country. The SHGs in AP, popularly known as Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (DWCRA) groups, are supported by revolving funds instituted by AP government for the purpose.

(e)-Corporate Involvement: Convergence of quite a few Government programs, both at the Central and State levels, is increasingly getting reflected in the nascent, up coming innovative SHGs tapping the goodwill of FMCG corporates in India.

Christened as “Project Shakti”, consumer giant Hindustan Liver Ltd (HLL)’s new distribution model is changing the lives of AP’s rural womenfolk, co-terminus as it is with the company’s changing rural profile. Piloted in Nalgonda district in 2001, Project Shakti covers over 5,000 villages in 52 districts in AP, Karnataka, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. With over 1,000 women entrepreneurs (‘Shaktiammas’) involved in the project, the AP Govt has channeled the HLL tie-up through DWCRA networks set up under the Dept of Women Empowerment and Self-Employment.

SHGs as Platforms for Political Mainstreaming

Before discussing the socio-economic role of SHGs in India, it is necessary to recognize that an important desideratum for women’s empowerment is their “political mainstreaming”, a process that is interwoven with the economic dimension. Whereas the United Nations has made rapid strides in progressing with gender mainstreaming. India’s efforts in this regard are woefully inadequate. This is notwithstanding the fact that a number of SHGs have also adopted political empowerment and institutionalization of women’s representation in governance such as people’s organisations (Ayojan Samitis, federations, the Indian parliament, legislative and judiciary, Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha as well as the Panchayati Raj institutions) so that they may be able to exert direct influence on governance. During on going consultations on gender issues involving the UN system as a whole, women leaders have requested the UN System in India to support women in their effort to introduce the 81st Amendment into the Indian Constitution to allow reservation of one-third of all parliamentary seats for women.

SHG Best Practices

Briefly outlined below are select NGO-SHG organizations currently adopting best practices, a few culled out from supra-national sources (*) like the World Bank’s PovertyNet.org/ UNIFEM, UNDP, IFAD etc:

(a)-Empowering Rural Producer Organizations: World Bank Group's Strategic Framework identifies “empowering poor people to participate in development and investing in them” as one of the key pillars underpinning the World Bank's efforts to reduce poverty. A major thrust of World Bank’s Rural Development Strategy is "integrating the needs of the rural poor in national policy dialogues", a process which must include a broad base of stakeholders, including rural producer organizations, civil society and Rural Development Ministries.

(b)-Rural Producer Organizations (RPOs) contribute to food security, making marketable goods available. They also participate in rural development policy making, in natural resource management and biodiversity conservation. They preserve local cultural heritage, building profitable businesses on traditional know-how. The percentage of Bank funded agricultural projects that include capacity building for rural organizations has increased from 26% in 1997 to 62 % in 2001. The Bank is determined to keep up the effort because seventy-five percent (75%) of the world's poor live in rural areas and agriculture or agriculture-related activities are their primary income source. The World Bank website aims to share information and experience among people and institutions committed to building the capacity of Rural Producer Organizations as key economic stakeholders in the fight to reduce rural poverty.

(c)-Sambhav-a social service organization in Madhya Pradesh has started two women SHGs--the Sahariya Jan Andolan (SJA), which has 8,414 members, and Mahila Kranti Manch (MKM) with 5,000 members. Working mainly for infusing a sense of solidarity to address issues affecting women’s lives and resources, Sambhav seeks to press for their involvement in political decision making at grass-roots level such as securing their rightful place in Panchayat Raj institutions, influencing legislators and official machinery, resisting exploitation and abuse etc.. SJA and MKMSahariya members no longer vote for a single party, their franchise is divided and strategic. That political leadership is emerging from such processes is reflected in the fact that critical decisions on the power game and political affiliations of rival groups are preceded by Intensive Analyses of the pros and cons of a wide spectrum of political issues at the grass-roots level. On the subject of women daring to contest elections even in the face of threats and poverty, although apparently in the face of violence and terror, they are forced to adopt a quiet and detached facade.

(d)-Swayamsiddha - A socio-economic empowerment scheme for women to live with dignity and self-reliance, stresses on access to micro-credit and envisages block and Panchayat-level participation by women, cutting across all regional, economic and social groups. The aim is to guide women in understanding the social, economic and political issues; educate them on their status, rights and privileges; and generate awareness on nutrition, health, hygiene and environment.

(e)-International Center for Entrepreneurship and Career Development (ICECD), a voluntary non-government organization formed in 1986 to facilitate economic empowerment of women through micro / small enterprise ownership, works with business communities, government departments and development agencies across Asia, Africa, Pacific and Caribbean countries. They have trained over 10,000 women trainers directly, who in turn have developed the capacity of thousands of personnel in other organizations. In recent years, ICECD is foraying into building up leadership and vision among womenfolk through a variety of strategies. ICECD’s Political Empowerment Program advocacy comprises:

(i)-Awareness building and advocacy for women’s rights and opportunities

(ii)-Developing strategies for political empowerment of women in local governance in rural areas

(iii)-Capacity building enhancing women’ functional skills for resource mobilization, planning and networking.

(iv)-Creating a Counseling Cell for both: access to information and support to women leaders.

(*)-Also refer Annexure-A for excerpts from the UN Sub-Committee Report on NGO Best Practices, April 2003

(f)-Two SHG projects “Community Aid abroad” and “Development Support Team” are part of a program of social, economic and political empowerment of women in Maharashtra and the neighboring states. The program also includes, inter alia, lobbying for legal and economic policy changes at the state and national levels. Stree Aadhar Kendra, another SHG, is part of a government committee that came up with one of the most progressive of state level gender policies in India, viz., “title to all newly-purchased property must be jointly held by husband and wife”.

Community Aid Abroad has extended its South Asia program with assistance from Aus AID, together with Oxfam in Great Britain. The Netherlands Credit programs are reportedly far from successful in achieving the desired socio-economic change. A recent five-year review of their South Asia programs has observed that in some regions women involved in credit activities were not moving on to broader issues; and loan activities had become ends in themselves. As such the program is considering literacy classes as an alternative way of involving women in political discussion, enkindling thereby a hope for political inclusion and participation that has hitherto eluded and alienated them.

Problems Encountered by Women SHGs in India

Understanding Poverty: Understanding poverty is basic to identifying target groups most vulnerable to poverty that SHGs ought to be aiming at. Research based on secondary sources and the Internet reveals variegated problems -- social, economic and political --, commonly encountered by women SHGs in India, as discussed below:

Identification and Addressing Root Causes of Poverty: There is a great deal of discussion in academic literature on how to identify the poor, and how efficiently to reach them. Poverty was initially defined as an income concept, but in recent years it is also being seen as a vulnerability concept. Using the “income” concept, poverty removal is seen as happening through raising income levels; while as per “vulnerability” concept, poverty removal is seen as a process of protecting women from both economic and social vulnerability. Both approaches are valuable and meaningful. The income approach tends to lead more to “income-generation’ programs, the vulnerability approach in contrast leads to more social programs such as education and health provision.

Socio-Economic Factors

Structural Issues: The first structural issue is the place of the poor in the society. Are all Indians below the poverty line (BPL) only to be considered as poor ? Or are there some poor above the poverty line (APL). What is the rationale if non-income criteria were also considered? Barriers to entry into labor and product markets, for example, are closely connected in India with gender, caste and class. Further, social needs such as health, child-care, education and housing --, are all linked to economic capabilities as well as to provision of social security by markets and the State. With reforms getting under way in India for over ten years now, market and State structures have learnt to measure levels of poverty and well being with greater precision, with the result that the inter-related nature of these structures is beginning to assist Governments in better understanding of poverty. Thanks to technology, a more structured approach to poverty reduction in respect of modern day rural India is within the realm of feasible solutions..

The Poor Need Gainful, Guaranteed Employment: Women are no longer regarded as mere “deprived persons”, but also reckoned for their economic potential in what Alvin Toffler calls “Prosumers”, meaning simultaneously producers, workers and consumers in their own myriad ways. They wish to earn their living in dignity, not depend on doles or outside support. Women crave for the security afforded by employment through which they can earn enough in cash and kind. In other words, they need guaranteed employment. Whereas in the formal sector, employment generates through creation of jobs by firms, -- such employment is generally regular, full time, protected employment, with a clear employer-employee relationship --, in the informal sector there are no ‘jobs’ as such, they ought to be minimal given the tiny nature of the businesses that one finds dotted in this sector.

Creating employment is no longer a matter of creating ‘jobs’, but of strengthening workers and producers to overcome barriers and enter markets where they would be competitive. Labor, product and financial markets need to be survailled by rule-based institutions, which in turn would link them with larger markets. Although Governments have been serious with liberalization of markets, the process has been slow. It has so far reached only the formal sector, and not yet the informal (unorganized, tiny) sector where the vast majority have remained straitjacketed by archaic, non-inclusive policies.

Paucity of Studies with Gender SHGs and Cost-Benefit Perspective: India’s women’s organisations are concerned about the manner in which micro-credit is being promoted as a panacea for poverty alleviation. It was pointed out that "success", for both Government and the NGOs is gauged by the amount of money saved, size and frequency of loans and rate of loan repayment, rather than by the extent to which the economic exploitation of women has been reduced. There are practically no rigorous studies of changes in the income and expenditure patterns of members of SHG’s before and after they take up economic activities using micro-credit. Similarly, there are very few studies that explore the extent to which micro-finance programs have been able to facilitate non-economic dimensions of empowerment for the women members of SHGs such as inclusion and participation in political decisions impacting their lives.

Globalization, Competition Policy versus Subsidies: Micro-credit and micro-enterprise projects, funded by large by multilateral and bilateral donors, provide safety nets for women as part of their efforts to keep a "human face" consistent with the globalization philosophy. Experience shows that support in the form of subsidies on raw materials and marketing assistance to traditional artisanal cooperative SHGs is far from organized be it from Government or from a well-connected NGO. With government policies favoring entry of multinationals into the rural market in India, the extent to which SHGs can provide a viable base for rural entrepreneurship has come under scrutiny. Grassroots women SHGs also express concern about the tendency of donors to piggyback their micro-finance interventions on already existing groups, thus reducing costs and co-opting the work of smaller integrated programs. In their eagerness to promote financially viable and minimalist interventions, donors are glossing over contradictions emerging in micro-finance programs. Often empowerment got a short shrift because of untenable assumptions made by policy makers.

Socio-Political Factors

Capacity-Building ensures Empowerment: While the focus of women’s SHGs is increasingly getting limited to savings and credit support, women’s political empowerment endeavors in India are relegated to back burner due to excessive wieghtage accorded to economic upliftment issues. Rather than fuzzy, ivory tower policy interventions, Governments should do well to take on the more fundamental problem of SHG Capacity Building. Special focus is required to build skill sets to enable SHGs focus on strengthening their vision to deal with the effects of policy interventions on socio-economic and political issues. Inducting the SHGs gradually into political processes as they gain experience follows as a corollary. What SHGs need is hand-holding, viz., (a)-Management training to get at an enhanced learning curve and benefit from own as well as peer SHG experience, and (b)-Market prognoses to internalize and enmesh own priorities in line with the village level needs. Surveys indicate that simply providing credit to poor women may not be enough to enable them take care of their living, particularly if men in their families try to take charge of loans. Without a holistic approach, credit programs can not be successful in achieving the desired socio-economic ends. A recent review of Community Aid Abroad - South Asia program cited above is a case in point.

Political Empowerment: Political empowerment of women, organized under thrift movement, appears to be miles away. The Kurnool (AP) experience, wherein women’s SHGs have been organized under the UNDP since 1995 in seven Mandals of the district, illustrates this point. The SHG women, who entered the electoral fray in the 2001 local body elections in Kurnool, tasted the bitterness of fighting an election battle. Out of five posts of Sarpanches and forty ward members contested, only seven posts could be secured by SHG women in Orvakal mandal. The groups thereafter realized that only political parties could fight electoral battles, not the SHGs that came into being for fighting poverty. The village-level political outfits exerted pressure on them to retire from the contest. As the women remained adamant, the leaders, affiliated to major parties, tried to bring pressure on the contestants through their kin. In one case, a son threatened to commit suicide, in another, a husband threatened to divorce wife if she did not retire, in yet another case brothers issued a threat to their widow-sister to leave home if she wanted to remain in the contest. Such response from women SHGs, having become a controversy, was taken to the notice of the State Election Commission. The Commission, after due hearing, had come out strongly in support of the women SHGs. However, the critics of women SHGs contended that, being sponsored by Government, the SHGs should not have entered the electoral battle. Though not emerged yet as a strong political force, the local political leadership is suspicious about the intentions of the women SHGs in the political arena.

NGOs are important, but as a rule defy Accountability: NGOs have flourished only in closed loop communities where their work is appreciated, elsewhere they are not as much present as is often believed. While there are regional differences, NGOs are by and large plagued by the same problems as the state: the poor feel they are excluded from the NGOs decision arena. Lack of accountability apart, NGOs’ inept handling of gender sensitivity in respect of obstacles such as caste discrimination, social, religious taboos adversely impact their image.

In a series of studies carried out by UNDP and the South Asian Poverty Alleviation Program in Andhra Pradesh last year, three debates --centering on (a)-micro credit; (b)-social capital and feminization of poverty; and (c)-women and empowerment -- were prominent:

(a) The first debate was on the potential and limitations of micro-credit for women’s empowerment, with one section arguing for micro-credit as a panacea for poverty reduction and empowerment, and another section negating it saying that women’s labor and time gets exploited through such programs, without any tangible gains.

(b) The second debate was on the potential and limitations of "social capital". One group believes that strengthening social capital-bonding, bridging and linking can help people to come out of poverty and empower themselves, while another group posits that unless "physical capital" and "financial capital" are strengthened, poverty reduction and women’s empowerment will be distant goals.

(c) The third debate devolved on whether focus on gender and poverty distracts attention from the political agenda of women’s empowerment. One section holds that poverty is feminized, and that donors and development agencies should focus on the inter linkages between “gender, women and poverty”. The other position is that evidence on feminization of poverty is weak, and conflating gender issues with poverty, takes attention away from the broader agenda of women’s empowerment.

Strategies / Solutions for Promoting Sustainable Women SHGs

In light of the above analysis, it is imperative that strategies for sustaining women SHGs lay considerable emphasis on concerted joint action entailing continual struggle to steer development through their own organisations. The whole process essentially is one of self-empowerment (which is important, being a Gandhian edict at that, in the context of a polity at the grass-roots community level). What is needed is an Integrated Approach that identifies the needs of womenfolk from the poor and marginalized sections to reach a state of full employment status:

(i)-Women need capital formation at the household level through access to financial services (savings, credit, insurance) to build up and create assets of their own (land, house, work shed, equipment, cattle, bank balance). Asset ownership is the surest weapon to fight vulnerability to poverty;

(ii)-Capacity building to support themselves in a competitive market: access to market, infrastructure, technology, information, education, knowledge and relevant skills (eg., accountancy, management, planning, designing etc.);

(iii)-Social security-a modicum of healthcare, child-care, shelter and relief, - to insure themselves against the contingency of major health risks they and their families may face;

(iv)-Collective, organized strength (through their associations) to be able to actively participate at various levels in the planning, implementation and monitoring processes of the programs meant for them, and also in all matters of socio-political importance impacting their lives.

Gender Mainstreaming Initiatives

Designing Empowerment Strategies: Four key elements should feature in the design of empowerment strategies: (a)-Access to Information; (b)-Inclusion and Participation; (c)-Accountability; and (d)-Local Organizational Capacity. Interwoven alongside the application of these four elements are local and national governance, access to justice and pro-poor market development. For example, Judicial Reform Project (Ecuador) supports creation of legal aid clinics to help the poor and indigenous women exercise their legal rights; People’s Voice Program (Ukraine) demonstrates how greater citizen participation at the municipal level can lead to better service delivery and higher public satisfaction. While many examples of empowerment do exist, Steven Jorgensen, World Bank’s Social Development Director said the challenge now is to scale up and “move the empowerment agenda from the micro to a macro level.” Toward this end, the UN and the World Bank are seized with the task of forging partnerships across related networks, as also with constituting a thematic group on empowerment to seriously address the issues thereof. Regarding political empowerment one can cite the activities /programs of the Sahariya Jan Andolan and Mahila Kranti Morcha in MP that can be replicated elsewhere:

(a)-Organize electorate education activities.

(b)-Motivate the community to participate in the election and vote casting activities

(c)-Organize group dialogues with the contestants

(d)-Prepare an agenda of local issues and problems distribute it among the media and political groups

(e)-Generate mass awareness and lobby through the use of loudspeakers for increased participation of communities in electoral process.

(f)-Highlight draught relief work, atrocities on women, land alienation, displacement, PDS and drinking water issues

Coordination with UN System: The UN system in India during the past few years, under the leadership of UNIFEM, has been particularly active first, in preparing for Beijing and subsequently contributing to implementation of the plan of action of the Fourth World Conference on Women (1995) and the Indian National Program for Women. In 1997, the Inter-Agency Working Group on Gender and Development continued to coordinate UN system efforts to reflect gender issues in macro-policies and the allocation of resources consistent with India’s National Policy for the Empowerment of Women of 1996 and the development agenda of the UN system in India. In mid 1997, the Inter-Agency Working Group has formally linked up with the Government of India, who deputed an official as a permanent member of the group.

In support of the avowed Government of India agenda of reservation of one-third of seats in executive legislative bodies across the nation, UNIFEM started a project in media advocacy and strategic lobbying. Mention should be made here of a UN system collaboration with Women’s Political Watch, an American NGO, to convene an international conference on women and governance. The core consideration here was to express UN system’s concern for women empowerment and opportunities for their active participation in local self-governance paving the way for sustainable holistic development. Consultations with the UNIFEM have facilitated a dialogue between grass-roots women, the Government, banks and other credit dispensing institutions, and resulted in the birth of a registered.

National Collective for Micro-credit Movement comprising some 1,500 women SHGs and grassroots NGOs as the stakeholders. One of the most important tasks for advocates of self-help programs must therefore be dissemination of knowledge and sharing of members’ self-help experience.

Self-Help and SHG Integrity

• One of the tasks is to ensure that what is genuine and authentic in the ideology of self-help is developed and enhanced independent of the dictates of government-directed management. (Entails structuring and activating coalitions of relevant stakeholders; to facilitate working independently regardless of pushing and prodding by funding sources; remaining focused on missions and goals, setting out and implementing own business plans);

• Ensuring that self-help does not become a government healthcare facility; but that it remains accessible as an opportunity chosen by a deliberate purpose, vision and commitment;

• Public funding of self-help work may be exploited by the authorities to justify budget cut backs on other essential public services. SHG community must be wary of these ploys and not be swayed by exploitation.

• When specific areas of self-help receive public funding, money can be used to employ personnel as and when necessary to coordinate the work.

• Public funding should contribute to the systematic gathering of knowledge and its dissemination. A serious educational challenge confronting this work is to make self-help accessible to as many as possible.

• Funding ensures that self-help becomes known more widely and is accessible to a wider public by making funds available to publish informational and promotional materials.

• Self-help increases the self-helper's quality of life and improves his or her ability to cope with adversity
Working with self-help can play a significant role in women’s motivational and behavioral paradigm whilst facing winds of change. The next step would be advocacy for others in need of self-help, which requires a collective vision and entails the need for a proper sustainability framework for women SHGs, which, cast in a multi-dimensional matrix of inter-relationships, will enable us comprehend its scope and importance (See Annexure for SHG best practices).

Empowerment

"Empowerment" puts individuals at the center of development and in a position where they can improve their social and economic situation in society. Empowerment implies dealing with the distribution of power within a society. The purpose is to strengthen disadvantaged groups and to prepare them to a more important share of power. Issues at stake are human rights, awareness, self-confidence and the ability to represent and defend the group or personal interests against stronger groups. But empowerment has also to do with our own attitudes and values. In fact they at least partially influence our development philosophy and our motivation. Generally speaking, it is difficult to promote empowerment if we are not ready to discuss our own value systems. Empowerment may lead to social and political conflicts: whether we accept the risks of such conflicts needs to be appreciated on a case by case basis, usually a basic poser in policy making.

Desiderata for Implementation

• The Institutional Policy of Intercooperation: A clear will to make out of empowerment an institutional goal and to implement such a strategy operationally.

• A Target Group Approach: Disadvantaged groups within a society, in particular small farmers and women are the primary focus.

• Mobilization and Organization: The target groups have to be supported in the mobilization of their own forces, in their organizational capability, their ability to express their interests and defend these towards other interest groups.

• Networking: Local organizations to be strengthened through exchange with other groups, the promotion of regional networks and service organizations.

• Access to Resources: The target groups need access to economic resources and participation in decisions on the use and control of such resources.

• Sustainable Results: Empowerment strategies have to be conceived in such a way that sustainable results are possible. This means that responsibility for execution and management lies from the beginning with the target groups and their partner institutions. Organizational capacity and institution building efforts have to be designed in such a way that sustainability can be reached within a defined deadline without further donor/outside support.

Necessary Complementary Activities

• Comprehensive socio-economic analysis: Gaining insight and knowledge of power relationships, the interests involved and the values of the participants and groups concerned is a prerequisite for defining the support strategy for an empowering process.

• Target Groups Involvement: The target groups and/or their representatives have to be involved in all steps of the co- operation program.

• Policy Dialogue: The mobilization of target groups should lead to increased negotiation power and advocacy in the policy dialogue with other interest groups in society and state.

• Capacity Building: Access and creation of information, education and training strengthen the ability to define one's own interests and defend them. This calls usually for specific support programs.

• Economic Activities: Political empowerment entails a general improvement of living conditions; access to employment, economic activities. Access to credit and markets are therefore indispensable instruments.

Partners for Empowerment

• The State as a Guarantor for the necessary Basic Conditions: Even though the unequal distribution of power and resources and unfavorable basic conditions are often the reasons for putting empowerment on the international co-operation agenda, an appropriate legislation and a law enforcement power are preconditions for empowering the disadvantaged groups of society. Therefore a strong state, able to create a conducive environment for empowerment, is important. Intercooperation thinks that part of a successful empowerment strategy is to negotiate with the state in order to enhance the political will for "good governance" and to promote social equity (policy dialogue).

• NGOs and Civil Society as operational partners: The experience, convocation power and motivation knowledge of NGOs earmark them in the opinion of Intercooperation to be privileged partners for the implementation of empowerment strategies. Collaboration should be conceived in such a way that these organizations should actually be the ones to put such strategies into practice. The role of Intercooperation from the very beginning is one of counselling and supporting.

• Disadvantaged Groups as Partners and Beneficiaries: The role of the target groups in an empowerment strategy has to be redefined in each case. Basically, as much partners' autonomy as possible should be favored. Usually, co-operation is a participatory effort, where the respective role of each partner has to be coordinated and well balanced. Increased self-help capacity and increased autonomy of decision are the overriding goals.

Expected Results

• Redistribution of Power: The partners and beneficiaries of an empowerment strategy will have more weight and active participation and increased autonomy in their decisions. They are recognized partners in the political decision making process.

• Strengthening of Social Identity: The partners will be able to define their interests and defend them towards other interest groups and the state in a sustainable way. They have an increased self-consciousness and they feel that they and their interests are represented.

• More Equitable Distribution of Resources and Control of their Management: The co-operation partners have an improved access to economic and natural resources. There are indications of redistribution in favor of economically disadvantaged groups.

• Stable Social and Organizational Structures: The empowerment process is supposed to enable the partners to build autonomous and self sustaining structures, which strengthen their political, social and economic position within society on a long term basis.

Empowerment Strategies

Sustainable SHGs at Mandal / Village / Block Level: In dry rural areas provision of drinking water is closely linked to the capability of women to enter labor markets. Thanks to modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), it is possible to look deeper into and analyze successful micro-credit funded enterprises in terms of a range of causal variables such as market access, levels of family assets and risk-taking capacity. However illiteracy, accentuated by the extent of digital divide, often limits analytical depth precluding the analyses of variance traceable to "core vulnerable sections" among the poor. Evaluations confirm that SHGs tend to exclude the poorest women not only because of their inability to save but also because other members see them as bad credit risks. Knowledge Management (KM) tools and well defined poverty metrics incorporating multi-disciplinary approaches as defined by the World Bank (PovertyNet.org) and UNDP (Millennium Development Goals) should go a long way in this direction.

Emphasis on Quality Training of SHGs There is already an acute shortage of trained women for running the existing SHGs on a sound footing. Efforts made so far by the Government agencies and the voluntary agencies in training women reportedly are not that successful, as besides the problems already mentioned, they are woefully under-equipped lacking as they are in a systematized approach for seeding and replication of sustainable SHGs, quality training material etc. In the initial stages the need of the day, therefore, is to:

(a)-prepare quality training material, launch a nationwide seeding program, and provide training to women in large numbers, who could then function as resource persons to form more replicable seed SHGs, who in turn train the new SHGs and oversee their work.

(b)-Use of Latest Technologies: An important of technology is affordability and appropriateness for rural women, who by and large are disadvantaged both in access and ability to use.

Communication Media: Education is the most important pre-condition for women’s empowerment. Distance education and its associated technologies allow increased access to education, democratize and control costs to afford quality of education at a reasonable cost, not otherwise possible through traditional means. The strength of modern media consists in reaching a large section of population in the shortest possible time. Together with interactivity made possible by modern ICTs providing update content, graphics and case studies at minimal costs, women SHGs will go a long way in fighting socio-economic causes in the country.

More choice is not necessarily better choice: More information does not necessarily make us better informed. Technologies should be viewed as ‘tools of trade’ rather than a driving force behind education. Selection of appropriate media is an important factor in reaching out specific target groups. Alternative media such as visually rich small booklets with a little text, flip charts and posters, media have been imaginatively used by some NGOs in generating awareness on issues like health, child-care, women’s rights, empowerment etc.

Support Groups: SHGs evince structural affinity with small voluntary groups for mutual aid and the accomplishment of special tasks or resolution of specific problems. They are usually formed by peers who have come together for mutual assistance in satisfying a common need, overcoming a common handicap or life-disrupting problem, and bring about desired social and/ or personal change. The initiators of such groups emphasize face to face social interactions and assumption of personal responsibility by members. Such interactions often provide material assistance, as well as emotional support. Frequently cause-oriented, they evince an ideology or value system through which members may attain an enhanced sense of personal identity.

Empowerment is quite Challenging: The Govt of India has launched a number of women empowerment programs, and formulated several schemes such as the Integrated Women’s Empowerment Program (IWEP). The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), with its experience of running a large number of programs for women throughout India, has accepted this challenge in collaboration with Dept of Women and Child Development, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. The IGNOU started a Training Certificate Program "Empowering Women through SHGs" with a view to preparing a cadre / network of master trainers for the sustainability of these SHGs. In a country like India, where the gender divide and the inequalities between men and women is so pronounced and widespread, providing skills and opportunities to be economically self-sufficient must go hand in hand with social and political empowerment.

Towards Sustainable SHGs

Basic Gender Needs and Issues: Strategies for sustaining women SHGs must lay considerable emphasis on concerted joint action to steer development through own organisations. The process, being a Gandhian edict at that is essentially one of self-empowerment is important in the context of a polity at the grass-roots community level. An Integrated Approach that identifies the needs of women from the poor and marginalized sections uplifting them to a state of full employment must be underlined in this regard.

Strategies / Solutions for Sustainable SHGs: Over the past few years SHGs have been organized under a veritable list of Government-sponsored programs, e.g., the DWCRA of AP, Mahila Mandals, Nehru Yuvak Kendras etc. Simultaneously, financial institutions have come forward with various schemes such as the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD)’s scheme for providing micro-credit through women SHGs. Recently, a number of international agencies have launched schemes offering micro-credit to women SHGs. The Department of Women and Child Development, Government of India is implementing a scheme called Indira Mahila Yojana, aiming, inter alia, at federating the women SHGs at the village / block levels. Important to sustainability is ensuring that SHG women are accountable for the four desiderata outlined below in the right combinations which they think are viable and manageable.

Seeding and Replication of Sustainable SHGs: Women themselves must don the multi-stakeholder roles of planners, users, managers and owners of the poverty alleviation programs meant for them. Merely forming groups is not enough for capacity building among women. Training, skill development to tackle market and risk exposure need strong emphasis. Most SHGs in India are currently focusing on information sharing; awareness and confidence, capacity-building for empowerment through micro level planning and group action. SHGs promoted by NGOs exude a groundswell of confidence, determination and will power in their assertions that India’s women SHGs, fledgling though they may be, will be able to overcome teething troubles, of which women’s empowerment stands out prominently. Sustainable development is possible only if all the stakeholders of development programs participate in the development process, a prime reason why NGOs are able to show better results compared to Government agencies. The approach, considered particularly effective in the case of women, in the macro-sense, is that of sustainable SHGs. A definitive organizational, socio-economic and political framework as shown below must be at the core as a prime mover to groom SHGs as sustainable entities:

Sustainability Framework for Women’s Self Help Groups

(a)- Organizational - Sustainability

(a-1)- Encouraging self-reliant women SHGs to form groups according to felt-needs and socio-economic status creating an environment for federating and networking with other groups

(a-2)- Improving access of women to micro-credit

(a-3)- Convergence of different agencies for women’s empowerment

(a-4)- Ensuring women’s involvement in local-level planning

(b)-Economic Sustainability

(b-1)- Creating self-reliant, sustainable SHGs capable of prioritizing women’s needs and interests, and bringing about their social emancipation and economic empowerment

(b-2)- Ensuring for SHGs direct access to and control over resources through a sustained mobilization and convergence of all sectoral programs

(b-3) - Strengthening and institutionalizing the savings habit among the womenfolk and ensuring their control over own resources;

(b-4)- Infusing a subsidy-free ethos in women’s economic empowerment

(c) Political Empowerment Sustainability

(c-1)-Motivation to work for change, priming womenfolk to moving up the ladder economically and politically

• Confidence and awareness among SHG members regarding
• women’s status, legal rights, health, nutrition, education,
• hygiene & environment and of other socio-economic and
• political issues impacting their lives.

(c-2)- Interaction with professional assistance, networking with pressure for ensuring women’s empowerment / rights

Women SHGs - a Hunting Ground for Research

Change in Resource using Competencies: Over the past four decades, planned interventions have from time to time ushered in new institutions and innovative experiments to mobilize rural social capital in the Asian region. Rural women are increasingly being organized into small SHGs to procure credit for micro-enterprises. Access to credit makes it necessary for women to acquire resource use competencies. These competencies include (a) women understanding their obligations and rights relevant to credit, (b) women cultivating skills to identify, set up and operate profitable micro-enterprises and (c) learning to function in a formal or semi-formal organizational structure of SHGs linked to NGOs that foster non-traditional norms of participation and articulation.

Although social innovations such as credit groups, supported by donor agencies, have opened up opportunities for rural women, a challenge yet lies in developing resource competencies taking advantage of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to reach them out by distance education. Can SHGs also be learner groups for distance education outreach? Can women leaders, developed through women’s participation in SHGs, be targeted as facilitators of a learner group? On production–related resource use competencies, adopting cash crops such as onion, tomato or ginger in a contract farmer relationship requires learning about markets and prices, as well as of the obligations and problems of being tied to a world market through a third party. Rural women, unfamiliar as they are with world market linkages, lack key competencies to negotiate and deal with complex contractual relationships, and thus be economically disadvantaged. Can the content of a distance learning package include resource use competency know-how for women, to help them function effectively amidst complex economic transactions?

Sustainable SHGs and Economic Development: Sustainable development must be people centric; ensure quality and not quantity of growth. Alternative development models are lately gaining ground as current models have failed to fulfill people’s aspirations. Deficiencies in the present development models must be corrected on the following lines:

• Sustainable development models must have a basic needs orientation, and not exploitative;

•Sustainable models must not result in alienating people from critical development processes (leading to deficiencies/ default in gender inclusion, participation, bottom-up micro-level planning etc)

• Presents models incorporate mechanisms of centralization of sorts with sporadic excesses in control over resources and decision-making.

An elevated status to people should therefore be the main plank of any new people-centric strategy so essential for success especially of women SHGs.

• People must be subjects and not objects of development. Creativity and enhancement of human potential, and self confidence among people to steer their own vision and destiny, and inner satisfaction that forms the basis of a convivial living in an enlightened society, must be the guiding principles in all development endeavors.

Conclusions

As can be gauged from above discussion, poverty is a multi-faceted problem. Involving finances, food supply, housing, infrastructure, education, health and hygiene, war, politics, self-regard and more, poverty is by and large a women’s issue. “There can be no one single solution to poverty” is a major conclusion emerging from a recent Survey (April 2003) prepared by Sub-Committee for the Eradication of Poverty of the NGO Committee for Social Development to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). Many issues must be addressed and a variety of approaches must be taken to ease impoverishment among the peoples of the world. The projects surveyed represent a diverse, if not exhaustive, array of active programs managed by NGOs and local communities, often in partnership with government. They are reducing local poverty and its resulting problems.

Formidable as it is the task of getting at an analyzed, well assimilated and cultured viewpoint on promoting Self Help Groups in India, this Paper seeks to win inspiration from (a)-the PovertyNet.org (world Bank’s) site which provides good insights on how to go further in this regard; and (b)-the UN Sub-Committee’s Survey Report on best practices in promoting an NGO-SHG praxis. Borrowing a leaf from PovertyNet.org’s Empowerment web pages on Tamil Nadu is recommended in this context.

PovertyNet.Org’s Empowerment Web Pages on Tamil Nadu

The Government of Tamil Nadu in partnership with the World Bank is preparing the Tamil Nadu Empowerment and Poverty Reduction Project, which seeks to improve the livelihoods and quality of life of the rural poor (particularly women and other disadvantaged groups) through social, economic and democratic empowerment. Slated to go to the Board in FY05of their Project Business Plan, which boasts of the following components:

The Project Concept Document (PCD) identifies four components: Institutional and Organizational Development: including support to self managed organizations of the poor, strengthening and capacity building of village level elected representatives, and building NGO capacity to work as intermediaries and change agents.

Panchayat Support: including financial support to Gram Panchayats to implement demand driven community infrastructure and service plans (such as bridle paths and small connecting roads, rural water supply, village schools and small health centers), and capital investment to support development of the Panchayat's own basic infrastructure and technical assistance needs (services of financial experts, private providers, contractors and technical support).

Enterprise Development: including support to innovative pilots for small and medium scale enterprises to improve local productivity and generate wage employment. The component would enable SHGs, common interest groups and their federations to undertake initiatives to enhance value-addition from their members' products and develop new enterprises and joint ventures.

Vulnerability Reduction: including community based insurance packages to address sources of risks and income instability, support to eradicate child labor and trafficking, and support to people with disabilities.

Taken together, these components seek to address both the supply side and the demand side of development in the state: improving the ability of local governments to respond to the interest of their citizens, and increasing poor people's incomes and reducing their vulnerability by creating opportunities for them to engage in society and organize for collective action. The World Bank’s PovertyNet.org’s web page says, “tracking and reporting the project progress where new and interesting learning and developments can be shared, and general information about the project disseminated”. Through this a "real time collective learning” process can take place regarding how to design and implement strategies to empower poor people”. Once such improvements are up and running, development information on this website can offer noteworthy insights into best practices for NGO-SHG praxis.

Goal-oriented drive in organizing and creating visibility for self-employed women, enabling them to get a higher income and have control over their own resources is paramount. A large number of people assert deep interest in the election processes, and encourage the community to exercise their franchise wisely.

QUALITY OF GROWTH (A PEEK INTO POLICY IMPERATIVES FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES)

2009-04-07T17:27:00.008+05:30

Sunvistas

Free market reforms have in recent years led development economists to focus on Quality of Growth (QOG). This background paper is designed to serve as a basis for undertaking more comprehensive research on the subject with specific reference to India. Prominent among the economists who have advocated the QOG theory are Noble laureates David Dollar and Aart Kray, USA (2000). They said, while trade liberalization and domestic deregulation policies have tended to pay off in faster growth, at least in the short term, the distribution and volatility of growth, together with its quality and sustainability, have not been adequately addressed. This experience has led to the basis for three principles.

To achieve growth that sustains its impact on poverty and the environment requires more than market liberalization. It requires positive actions--not just by governments alone, but by other stakeholders. Toward the end of the millennium, it was found that many countries and external agencies followed only part of the required QOG approach, relying on policies that featured trade liberalization and domestic deregulation. For development to be comprehensive and sustainable, it needs to augment the value of three sets of assets, viz., (a)-Human and Social Capital; (b)-Natural and- Environmental Capital; and (c)-Physical and Financial Capital.

While the first two can be taken to represent true development objectives, while the third can be a means rather than an end to sustainable Quality of Growth. Ironically, developing country experience suggests that most attention usually was accorded to physical and financial capital (the means), rather than to human, social, natural, and environmental capital (the ends).

How do growth policies contribute to the accumulation of these assets? Some positively, and some negatively. Investments in education, while helping to generate growth, also contribute to the accumulation of human and social capital.

Policy incentives to attract short-term foreign capital, while facilitating investment in physical capital, may distort the rates of return against human and natural capital. Raising short-term growth through the overexploitation of forests, by contrast, runs down natural capital and environmental sustainability,

Second, for growth to reduce poverty, it has to be relatively stable not volatile, and its benefits have to be widely spread. The volatility and inequality of growth in the 1990s have been especially harmful to the poor, with external shocks throwing millions of near-poor back to permanent impoverishment. Legitimate aims of development policy thus include reducing the volatility of growth, enhancing financial risk management, and reducing the sensitivity of the poor to changing economic fortunes.

The income gains from globalization have been borne out by the experience of the past decade. So have the downside risks of inadequate regulatory and supervisory frameworks and the overall lack of preparedness in participating in the global economy. Volatility also comes from the responses of external players, which often can be irrational. Clearly both domestic and global policy frameworks affect the volatility from globalization.

Third, in addition to macro-economic stability, institutional structures for good governance underpin all other actions. To take one pervasive example, the stability of investments depend crucially on a country's vulnerability to all forms of corruption. The impact of growth more generally depends on how corruption erodes the benefits that would go to society at large. Poor governance and corruption are found to be highly regressive in their effects. Investing in improving the capacity for better governance therefore cuts across all else as a priority for better performance.

This review shows the impact of ignoring these principles, but they are not all that matters. in many parts of the world, social upheaval, civil strife, political unrest, and wars derailed progress in the 1990s. The menace of Terrorism after 09/11 in USA has further accentuated in the past one year. A fifth of the developing world's people live in conditions of conflict or post-conflict. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and Yugoslavia are just a few of the countries whose fortunes in the past two decades have been dictated more by socio-political crises than economic policies.

Nearly two dozen countries--with half a billion people—need to be closely monitored and analyzed because of their highly unstable socio-political conditions. Studies on how to manage risk and conflict and to mitigate exogenous shocks and social tensions began by end of the century. The World Bank’s understanding of the political economy of reforms -- economic and social -- was also rudimentary at that time. The reason for unsound policies and weak institutions, according to the bank, was not always a lack of understanding or false notions on the part of policymakers, but often the political difficulties of making changes. interest groups tend to constrain feasible reforms, with a wedge between policy design and policy implementation, as has happened during UPA regime India. Among other global and cross-border issues, -- capital flows, population pressures, labor migration, and environmental crises – continue to affect domestic outcomes.

The world population was projected to rise from 6 billion in 1998 to nearly 8 billion in 2025, even with a slower average rate of 1.5 percent a year. The desired number of children for most families in India is now two, a remarkable change in attitude and population policies.

Despite this slower growth, many countries face large increases in population that will undermine sustainable development. Global warming, environmental degradation, and the loss of biodiversity continue to worsen as people put more pressure on limited resources. These issues, while important for understanding country outcomes, are not dealt with in detail here.

Four Overlooked Actions

The distribution and quality of growth are rooted in national and global policy reforms. The lessons of development, especially those of the past decade, show that the quality of growth is best when four generally missing elements are integrated with (rather than added onto) growth strategies:

- Improving the distribution of education
- Protecting the environment
- Managing risk during global integration
- Fighting corruption and improving government

Looking Beyond Quantity

(a)-Toward Quality and Equitable Distribution of Education: Access to education is not enough. its quality and equity--measured by girls' education, access for the poor, and distribution of education need special attention. Also needed are supportive labor market policies and social protection. Governments have to ensure, but not necessarily provide, the quality and equitable distribution of social services. They also have to ensure the better use of the human capital of the poor by attending to the distribution of land and other assets people needed to benefit fully from better education and health.

(b)-Combining Incentives, Investments and Institutions to Sustain Growth and the Environment

(b-1)-Environmental degradation has worsened, a consequence of growing poverty, increasing population, domestic and global pressure on scarce resources, short-term economic growth unmindful of environmental consequences, and neglect of local and global commons.

(b-2)-Cost of environmental pollution and resource over-exploitation are enormous -- the losses in some cases, irreversible.

(b-3)-Few countries have confronted the underlying causes of environmental and resource degradation: market failures, poor information, and pernicious incentives. But growth need not necessarily have to ruin the environment. A stronger combination of incentives, investments, and institutions, --domestic and global--, can make environmentally sustainable growth a reality.

Dealing with Global Financial Risks

Global Financial Integration has Undeniable Benefits: But, it also makes developing countries more vulnerable to sudden swings in investor sentiment. In addition to maintaining sound macro-economic policies, actions are needed to strengthen domestic regulation and financial supervision -- as well as information infrastructure and corporate governance. Meanwhile, countries may want to be cautious when opening their capital accounts, making sure that special incentives are not provided for short-term flows -- and to consider reserve requirements and taxes for those flows. international policy coordination, prudential regulation and supervision, and lender-of-last-resort activity can provide liquidity and emergency financial assistance.

Improving Governance and Fighting Corruption

The traditions, norms, and institutions governing the interactions of people, markets, organizations, and state matters a lot for sustained economic growth and for broader development outcomes. Civil liberties, participatory processes, and the political system can make the difference between a stagnant and a thriving society. Corruption entails heavy social costs, keeping poor people poor. Bad economic policies, weak legal frameworks and regulations, and lack of professionalism all feed corruption. How to counter Corruption? With active civil societies and strong public oversight?

Qualitative Dimensions make or break Sustained Growth

If the distribution of basic education is highly skewed, broad-based growth and poverty reduction are not possible. This precisely is the case with India. Second, the qualitative aspects directly determine whether welfare improvements accompany growth.

For example, a high incidence of air and water pollution or the degradation of natural resources can be far more costly to the well-being of poor than the effects of many economic policies. The question in practice is how greater priority can be accorded to the quality dimensions--and how they are financed.

Observations

Attending to quality first does not put the entire burden on governments. In fact, this should be a call not to government intervention, but for greater participation by the private sector, NGOs and the civil society. Some of the quality dimensions that need protection lend themselves to full-cost pricing or taxation, both of which raise revenues, rather than spending. These are win-win opportunities to both improve quality and produce the resources to better people's lives. Civil outreach can help shift the emphasis of development to social and environmental concerns from today's exclusive focus on GNP growth. That can move the debate to what development really means.

Reformers could still find a reason for starting with the quantity of growth and attending to quality later—on grounds that the window of opportunity for liberalization must be captured first and not doing so would allow the opponents of liberalization to postpone reform. But as democracies spread and countries invest in capacity, they are likely to own reforms much more, and be in the driver's seat. In a mature and participatory setting, a country would not want to postpone the more important qualitative aspects to a time when the costs of addressing them will have multiplied. This precisely is the current setting in India's development histiry, where the country stands poised in the crossroads for a quantum leap in development , not just development but qualityof growth and development. The time for Quality of Growth is now or never.

So what is India doing after 62+ years of planned economic development? When can our citizens enjoy better Quality of life ?. India’s 2009 General Elections are increasingly seen as a watershed, whereat people are upping the ante and voicing their aspirations in no uncertain terms for a better quality of life.

The 2009 General elections is an opportune time to take stock of the situation and ask the parties contending for power as to how they would proceed lifting up the country from the morass, a quagmire as it were, of past 60 + years of "qualityless life" that has been palmed off to the hapless people as a development outcome.