DTN News - INDIA NEWS: Sonia Gandhi ~ Congress Debacle In Elections 2014 - Due To Unending Scams And Corruption In UPA Government

Asia News Report: DTN News - INDIA NEWS: Sonia Gandhi ~ Congress Debacle In Elections 2014 - Due To Unending Scams And Corruption In UPA Government

*Robert Vadra busy ‘salvaging’ land in Bikaner

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by K. V. Seth from reliable sources TOI
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - June 7, 2014: (BIKANER) As Narendra Modi gets ready to be sworn in as Prime Minister, Congress president Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra and his team are busy gathering documents to get requisite corrections done in purchase of huge swaths of land in Bikaner district. 

In the run up to the elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had pledged to probe the land deals of Vadra once it comes to power. The party had also released a CD detailing how the Ashok Gehlot government shielded the alleged dubious deals of the son-in-law of Sonia Gandhi. Four Vadra companies bought land in excess to permissible limit under the Land Ceiling Act. The report of the district collector revealed that the Gehlot government changed the Land Ceiling Act, purposely to help Vadra buy lands. 

Latest reports say that Vadra has deputed a few individuals, who are camping in Bikaner and trying hard to collect documents in view of possible legal battles. A key member of Vadra team, Mahesh Nagar, is visiting Bikaner frequently.

Sources say that Nagar was holding meetings with district officials secretly and trying to collect papers from them. He was reportedly the front man when Vadra companies bought land in Bikaner.According to sources, Nagar is continuing the process of purchase of land and even in May 2014, Nagar purchased nearly 1,000 bighas in Pokhran tehsil of Jailsalmer district. 

TOI could not contact Nagar, though officials confirmed his presence in the district. Nagar reportedly belongs to Haryana. 

As per the provisions of Rajasthan Imposition of Ceiling on Agricultural Holdings Act, 1973 there is a ceiling limit of 280 bigha in the state. It means that a person is allowed to possess not more than 280 bigha of land. 

However, Gehlot government amended Section 17 of Rajasthan Imposition of Ceiling on Agricultural Holdings Act, 1973 in September 2010, that too with retrospective effect. The amendment says that restrictions on quantum of land deal shall not apply to a person who acquires the land with the prior approval of the state government or any other authority appointed by it. Moreover, records show that the "soul" of the Act was changed without debate in the state assembly. 

After taking over as chief minister, Vasundhara Raje issued letters to district collectors of Bikaner and Jodhpur for providing data of land deals in their districts. According to sources, collector of Bikaner sent a report saying that companies of Robert Vadra had purchased nearly 2,503 bigha in Bikaner district, out of which nearly 1,124 bigha had already been sold. 

According to BJP's Bikaner MP Arjun Ram Meghwal, Vadra-owned companies Sky Light Hospitality Pvt. Ltd., Blue Bridge Trading Pvt. Ltd., Skylight Reality Pvt. Ltd., Real Earth Estates Pvt. Ltd. and North India IT Park Pvt. Ltd bought 1,634 hectors (6,536 bighas) (1 hector = 4 bigha approx) land in in Bikaner district. Through these companies, land had been purchased in Kolayat, Gajner, Golari, Darbari, Sarah Kishnayat, Basti Chauhanan, Sarah Sutharan villages in Kolayat tehsil.

Disclaimer statement Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information supplied herein, DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions. Unless otherwise indicated, opinions expressed herein are those of the author of the page and do not necessarily represent the corporate views of DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News

*Link for This article compiled by K. V. Seth from reliable sources TOI
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DTN News - INDIA ECONOMY NEWS: Struggling Coalition Leaves Indian Economy In The Doldrums

Asia News Report: DTN News - INDIA ECONOMY NEWS: Struggling Coalition Leaves Indian Economy In The Doldrums
*It didn't go unnoticed that the best news for the beleaguered Indian economy last week came not from the markets but the Gods via the weatherman
*India’s position dips in geopolitical index owing to corruption, misgovernance - IANS
*Report: India's treasury lost $210 billion in coal scandal - LA Times
*'The Mother Of All Sweetheart Deals' - Outlook India
Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Dean Nelson, Delhi - Telegraph UK  
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - April 30, 2012: As India's once 'miraculous growth' story took a dark twist – Standard & Poors downgraded its outlook to 'negative' while Moody's blamed the ruling Gandhi family for the political paralysis behind faltering growth – the country's Met Office offered one silver lining. It ruled out the possibility that the monsoon rains would fail.

While Dr Manmohan Singh's government has lurched from one crisis to another and serious differences within his coalition have placed almost all reforms on hold, fear of a failed monsoon is the one thing which unites his fractious cabinet and Indian business leaders alike.

In the past few weeks temperatures in New Delhi have plummeted, raising concerns that the searing heat and dust needed for a torrential monsoon will not come, causing crops to fail and inflation to soar once again.

If the weathermen's forecast is correct, India's problem remains a longer term one. How to revive a 'flagging' growth rate of 7pc back towards the double-digit figure the country had in its sights barely two years ago.

According to S&P and Moody's, the root cause of the disappointing performance lies in the country's government. S&P said last week that India's rating could deteriorate further if "the external position continues to deteriorate, growth prospects diminish or progress on fiscal reforms remains slow in a weakened political setting."

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Moody's appeared to lay the blame for India's plight at the feet of the Gandhi family which controls the Congress Party, the leading group in the governing coalition. Sonia Gandhi and the party's heir Rahul Gandhi "blew their chance" to revive a programme of reforms in parliament by wasting their time campaigning in the Uttar Pradesh state elections, in which the party was humiliated and the government further weakened.

Prime minister Manmohan Singh had hoped to introduce a series of foreign investment and tax reforms to further open up the country's markets and make it an easier place for foreign and domestic companies to do business. But plans have been mothballed because the governing coalition partners cannot agree.

Plans to reduce government spending on fuel and other subsidies have been halted, while the widely quoted $1 trillion India must spend on upgrading infrastructure from roads to power plants has yet to leave the government's coffers.

A general air of gloom was compounded when the government's chief economic advisor Kaushik Basu warned a Washington think tank not to expect any reforms until a stronger government is elected after the 2014 elections. "We are going through a difficult year. (After 2014), you would see a rush of important reforms and after 2015 India would be one of the fastest growing economies of the world. The new government, if in a majority, would start with the reforms in a big way because there is a sense that it needs to pick up," he said.

In the meantime foreign investors are rejecting India in favour of rivals, while major Indian companies are spurning domestic opportunities in favour of investing overseas, says Subodh Agrawal of Mumbai and London-based Euromax Capital.

He claims clients are afraid of investing in India because they believe its government's decision-making has become increasingly unpredictable. The proposal to allow the government to make retroactive tax demands – after its courts rejected a $2bn tax demand to Vodafone over its acquisition of the mobile operator Hutchison – had made it impossible to sell India to prospective investors.

"S&P and Moody's have been kind to India. Its [real] forecast is doom and doom," he adds.

Jatinder Mehra, a director of the Essar Group, one of India's biggest business houses, says the government has depressed growth by over-reacting to inflation and focusing on curbing demand rather than solving supply problems.

Essar was a major partner in Vodafone India and has also been targeted by the government along with other companies whose 2G mobile phone operator licenses were revoked following corruption allegations. Essar has denied the allegations.

"The Indian economy is in slowdown mode. Last year growth dipped below 6pc, but we have seen 9pc. There is growth but it is slowing down," he says.

Vital investment in the country has contracted and consumption dipped following a series of anti-inflation measures taken in 2010-2011 which pushed interest rates beyond 14pc and reduced liquidity. "Instead of solving the supply constraints, demand was controlled through monetary initiatives, high interest, low liquidity, reduced investment and consumption," Mr Mehra explains.

Government attempts to appease lobby groups have also caused significant problems for the economy. The high inflation it was responding was in fact fuelled in part by welfare programmes for the poor which raised demand without tackling supply bottlenecks, the Essar executive says.

Environmentalist demands to halt coal mining in forest areas have affected the operation and opening of new power stations. "Essar has power plants, we have coal mines, but opening them is an issue," Mr Mehra says. The government's failure to stand up to environmental groups is harming development.

Deepak Talwar, a leading lobbyist and investor in India's hotel sector, says the government is in denial. Official measures to curb inflation have made finance prohibitively expensive and brought infrastructure projects to a standstill. His own hotel investments have been affected.

"The Reserve Bank of India kept raising interest rates and the government doesn't have the strength to say this is wrong for the economy. If you are not a group A borrower you are probably borrowing at 16pc – every project will be affected by that," he says.

The investment needed in roads is not happening because the government is not signing off projects, which means it still takes up to 48 hours for a good truck to drive 1,700 kilometres from Mumbai to Delhi. The problem, Mr Talwar says, is not in the fundamentals of the Indian economy, but in the political leadership above it. Smaller coalition partners are exploiting a gap between the government's real power centre, the Gandhi family, and the administration led by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh.

Poor co-ordination between the Congress Party's political leadership and the government and lack of clear direction is creating a power vacuum. Mr Talwar's solution is to fill it with a Gandhi. "The political leadership must take over the executive. If Sonia Gandhi was prime minister, everyone would fall into line. Or Rahul Gandhi could become prime minister and get this story over with."

Disclaimer statement Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information supplied herein, DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions. Unless otherwise indicated, opinions expressed herein are those of the author of the page and do not necessarily represent the corporate views of DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources  By Dean Nelson, Delhi - Telegraph UK  
*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News 
*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
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DTN News - INSIGHT BIHAR STATE ~ INDIA NEWS: From Darkest India, An Enlightened Leader

Asia News Report: DTN News - INSIGHT BIHAR STATE ~ INDIA NEWS: From Darkest India, An Enlightened Leader
Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Reuters
 (NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - February 5, 2012:  There's an apocryphal story about Bihar, a sprawling state on the Gangetic plains of eastern India that for decades held the dubious honor of being the most violent, poverty-stricken and corrupt in the land.

A Japanese minister visiting in the 1990s, shocked at the decrepit buildings, the darkness at night even in the centre of town and the crumbling roads, declared that it was all solvable.

"Give me three years," he told a state leader, "and I can turn Bihar into Japan."

"That's nothing," came the laconic reply from his host. "Give me three days and I will turn Japan into Bihar."

Bihar is no longer the butt of jokes, however, not since Nitish Kumar took charge of the ruined state in 2005 and began to turn it around -- winning such respect that he stands a decent chance of one day becoming prime minister of India.

"My first priority was governance, my second priority was governance and my third priority was governance," Chief Minister Kumar told Reuters at his office in the state capital, Patna, a dusty city where property prices have soared to levels paid in far away New Delhi, even as its streets teem with the desperately poor.

"Bihar suffered not because of bad governance but because of a lack of governance."

When India launched reforms to open up its state-stifled economy 20 years ago, many states surged ahead, leaving behind the 3.5 percent "Hindu rate of growth" that had plagued the decades after the country's independence from Britain in 1947, and with it Bihar.

Bihar is still India's most impoverished state: landlocked, not blessed with resources and prone to catastrophic flooding, its annual per-capita income of about $400 is just a third of the national average. Its 104 million overwhelmingly farm-dependent people have India's worst literacy rate and the lowest proportion of households with electricity, and the state scores miserably on the U.N.'s Human Development Index.

It's hard to imagine that in ancient times Bihar was the centre of the flourishing Magadha empires and the region where the Buddha lived and attained enlightenment.

And yet the state's dismally low income level has grown 250 percent since Kumar took the helm, more than double the national average. The growth of its economy has surged into double figures to become India's second-fastest growing state, driven by hefty public spending on roads and buildings and rapid expansion in services such as hotels and restaurants.

RESTORING FAITH

Kumar has done much more than bring growth. Working until midnight most days for the past six years, he has declared war on crime and corruption, introduced an act that gives citizens the right to efficient public services, launched a frenzy of road-building, empowered women and promoted education, offering a free bicycle to every girl that registers in a Grade 9 class.

"Everything had gone to the dogs," said Prakash Jha, one of Bihar's favorite sons, a Bollywood film-maker who has chronicled many of the state's ills, including the once-thriving industry of kidnapping businessmen.

"What Nitish Kumar has been able to do is restore faith in the society of Bihar. We had almost given up, but now you feel you can do things in Bihar," said Jha, who has put his money where his mouth is, spending $12 million on a shopping mall and cinema multiplex in Patna, the state's first.

Kumar is not without detractors: critics say he is poor at delegating, causes bottlenecks by amassing all decision-making in his office and accomplishes far less than he claims.

"This is a government of denting, painting and decorating," said state opposition leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui. "It's all on the surface. Nitish Kumar will hold a ceremony to inaugurate the ditch and then another for the bridge built over it."

Still, the contrast between the hyper-active chief minister of Bihar and the central government in New Delhi could hardly be more stark after months of drift and policy paralysis under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that have contributed to a slowdown in the country's stellar economic growth.

AN IDEOLOGY OF HUMANISM

A vegetable garden borders the path that leads to the simple Patna bungalow where the chief minister has his office. On a shelf inside his sparsely furnished room, there are several trophies awarded by media groups for "Indian of the Year." There is just one picture on the wall, an image of Mahatma Gandhi, father of independent India.

Kumar's father was a freedom-fighter during British rule, but the son has always been implacably opposed to the Congress party that led the struggle for independence and its Nehru-Gandhi dynasty of leaders, defining himself more by his vision of social justice than any political group.

"His is not an ideology of a political party, it's an ideology of humanism," said M.J. Akbar, one of India's best-known newspaper editors and a former member of parliament for a Bihar constituency.

Meticulously turned out in a creaseless cream tunic, sleeveless Nehru jacket and a grey scarf, 60-year-old Kumar smiles gently as he explains his style of governance: "pro-poor and pro-people."

An engineering graduate, Kumar first got a toehold in state politics and then in New Delhi, where he was a member of parliament and the country's railways minister in a coalition led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

He won elections in Bihar for his Janata Dal (United) party six years ago and, in a ringing endorsement of his policies, he was voted back to power in 2010.

Kumar's party is still aligned with the BJP, and popular wisdom has is that if their coalition wins the general election in 2014 he could be a strong contender to become prime minister.

Does he dream of leading the country one day?

"Not really," he says diffidently. "Serving my own people gives me satisfaction. I don't have any ambition. I don't have that kind of desire."

Not content to sit in Patna for long, Kumar gets around Bihar's 38 districts, talking to people on streets and in village squares to find out what they want fixed. These audiences are followed by meetings with district officials at which he prods the state's bureaucracy to respond.

"Why is there darkness around the lamp?" he asked at one such meeting in Patna recently, when he was informed that a scheme to provide free meals for schoolchildren was least effective in and around the city. "This is the capital, you all live here, we have to improve this."

Later, when told of plans to hire more land records staff, he instructed officials to make sure there were desks and offices ready for them. "We don't want them loitering in the corridors," he said, his voice restrained but still dominating the room filled with more than 100 bureaucrats.

This direct and no-nonsense delivery belies his apparent bonhomie.

"He is a very confident person who disguises his confidence with a great amount of modesty," said Akbar.

VOTES ARE 'CASTE'

It is sometimes said that in Bihar people "don't cast their votes, they vote for their caste."

That is because, besides being blighted by poverty, its people have long been sharply divided by Hinduism's social hierarchy. In the fairly recent past, upper and lower caste groups kept private armies, and pitched battles between them or massacres by one side or another were common.

Fanning the caste-based politics of Bihar in the 1990s was Lalu Prasad Yadav, now a lawmaker in New Delhi. A charismatic leader from a "backward" caste whose trademark humor can make a budget speech sound like a stand-up routine, Yadav's reign was dubbed the "Jungle Raj" as the rule of law broke down.

Kumar also belongs to a minority "backward" caste and was aligned with Yadav for years before they parted ways. One factor behind his rise has been his resolve to woo voters not by social blocs but on the basis of his government's performance.

"Caste is the reality in the Indian system, but I have proved that caste does not decide the outcome of an election," he said.

Corruption is still endemic despite Kumar's crackdown. He has confiscated the houses of two corrupt officials to turn them into schools, and many others face the same fate, but critics say he is actually too tolerant of the graft around him.

Law and order remains a serious problem, too. In 2010, Bihar ranked second among the country's states for the number of people killed in violent crimes, and police seize tens of thousands of illegal firearms every year.

Still, many feel that Bihar is a safer place since Kumar launched an anti-crime drive. Residents now feel less frightened to drive at night in rural areas, where roadside hold-ups and kidnappings were once routine.

"Five years ago, if we had to travel from Gaya to Patna, we would leave by 3 in the afternoon so we could get to the city before dark," said Navendu Kumar Thakur, who runs a construction company in the state. Gaya is about 100 km (60 miles) south of the state capital. "Now, it doesn't matter if we leave at 9 at night, there's no problem on the road."

Kumar says restoring faith in the police and judiciary was a top priority.

"A reign of terror used to prevail in the society, Bihar used to be in the news for all the wrong reasons," he said. "My first task was to ensure rule of law and trust in the system."

WEAK ECONOMIC BASE

With the improvement in law and order, there has been tentative interest in setting up industries in Bihar, which is 90 percent dependent on agriculture after the mineral-rich region of Jharkhand was hived off into a separate state in 2000.

New industries in Bihar can receive up to 300 percent of capital invested in VAT refunds over 10 years, in addition to a host of other incentives.

"He (Kumar) has shown that grass can grow in a desert," said Prem Kumar Agrawal, part-owner of a biscuit-making plant in the Hajipur industrial park near Patna, where half a dozen factories have opened in the past six months. With 300 workers, his enterprise produces 70-75 tonnes of biscuits per day.

"I give Nitish 9 out of 10 in terms of industrial policy," Agrawal said. "Bihar is now on the map."

But the new factories are only part of the story: abandoned buildings litter the rest of the industrial park, the metal fences on road dividers are rusty and the link to the nearby highway is a potholed and narrow road.

Manufacturing has in fact contributed very little to the surge in the economy's growth: with power cuts common, highways often jammed and graft still thriving, few investors are willing to brave Bihar yet. No surprise, then, that Bihar was ranked bottom last year in a state-by-state survey of economic freedom.

Official figures show that even agriculture, the mainstay of the economy, has contracted for the past six years, suggesting that the Bihar boom has been far from inclusive. Much of the growth has instead been generated by hefty public spending on construction, which means the Bihar boom may not have a solid enough base to be sustainable.

Indeed, Bihar is Exhibit A for the case that India is a two-track economy, with industry-friendly seaboard states rushing ahead as others grow from extremely low bases.

Shaibal Gupta, secretary of the Asian Development Research Institute in Patna, reckons that even if Bihar's growth continues at its current double-digit clip it would take 18 years to catch up with the present-day wealth of Maharashtra, home to the financial capital, Mumbai.

"We can't call it a miracle," Gupta said. "It's some change at an initial level that should have happened 60 years ago."

(Editing by Alex Richardson)

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Reuters
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*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
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