BAMCEF UNIFICATION CONFERENCE 7

Published on 10 Mar 2013 ALL INDIA BAMCEF UNIFICATION CONFERENCE HELD AT Dr.B. R. AMBEDKAR BHAVAN,DADAR,MUMBAI ON 2ND AND 3RD MARCH 2013. Mr.PALASH BISWAS (JOURNALIST -KOLKATA) DELIVERING HER SPEECH. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLL-n6MrcoM http://youtu.be/oLL-n6MrcoM

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Next India Startegy, Companies eye the Purchasing Power of Rural Youth as Free Market Democracy Focuses on Ethnic Cleansing!

Next India Startegy, Companies eye the Purchasing Power of Rural Youth as Free Market Democracy Focuses on Ethnic Cleansing!

Indian Struggle of LIBERATION is nothing but the LIBERATION from the Post Modern Manusmriti Zionsist Order Brahaminical!

FICCI opposes mining bill, debunks tribal compensation scheme



Indian Holocaust My Father`s Life and Time - Four Hundred THIRTY One

Palash Biswas

http://indianholocaustmyfatherslifeandtime.blogspot.com/

FICCI opposes mining bill, debunks tribal compensation scheme!

India and Pakistan Dance on the TENSION Rope on US Tune as once again US has sugested that India should continue talks with Pakistan to resolve issues!



Next India Startegy, Companies eye the Purchasing Power of Rural Youth as Free Market Democracy Focuses on Ethnic Cleansing!I have been watching the Rural India countrywide in Transition and the Plastic Money Inflicted Great Change has become the Fort Williams of Post Modern Manusmriti Zionist Rule.

Mind you, after Colonising India, the British Imperialists focused on Oriental studies and Lord Hestings and John Williams aligned to institutionalise the studies in Sanskrit. They established the ASIATIC Society as well as SANSKRIT College which was eventually headed by so called Indian Renaissance ICON ISHWAR Chandra Vidya Sagar!

John williams did learn Sanskrit within four years as he landed in Kolkata as High Court Judge and translated the the first Sanskrit Book, MANUSMRITI. Manusmriti is so vital for Imperialism. The Geramn Pundit Max Muller is also well known for his studies in Vedic culture and literature.

Hence, for me, perhaps our derest Friends and guides including VTR and Colonel Barves, Leaders representing Excluded communities, specifically AMBEDKARITES and TRUE Anti Imperialist Anti Fascist Social and environment Activist should agree, Indian Struggle of LIBERATION is nothing but the LIBERATION from the Post Modern Manusmriti Zionsist Order Brahaminical!

Hence the alliance of Global Hindutva and US War Economy sponsored International Zionsism, Indo US Nuclear Deal, Chidambaram`s Corporate War, War against Terror and RURAL Marketing Strategies do link with the History of British India and it is damn Interesting. The Bnegali Brahaminical Renaissance in the age of Sepoy Revolt, Indigo Revolt, Santahl Munda Bheel Gond Koiri Chuar Revolts and Agrarian Uprisings is well supported by the British Empire! Even today, Bengali Brahamins use the Icons of Rabindra Nath Tagore and the Renaissance heroes to hold on their Colonies across the Political borders all over the World on Fire!

Opinions and Editorials

       

   

Efforts off track

IE - 05:12 AM
The breakdown in diplomatic talks between India and Pakistan in Islamabad is despite the best efforts of interested third parties, most notably the US. In the last six months, funds for Track Two diplomacy through journalists, retired bureaucrats and academics have increased manifold.
       
        View:         Headlines Only |         Include Summaries |         Include Photos        
            
       
  •             Art magnifies imagination IE - 05:12 AM
  • History has documented different eras that have taken business forward. Technology advancement in the 19th century established the mechanical age, the 20th century belonged to electronic technology while the 21st century is proving to be based on digital technology. Last week, I'd touched upon musical breakthroughs in different eras that contributed to business success.
  •        
  •             India needs new politics IE - 05:12 AM
  • India is adrift. Worrisomely adrift. This is not because of any widespread social unrest or destabilising economic problems. Discontent in society there certainly is. Grievances due to the country's unbalanced economic growth there certainly are and they are mounting. But the lack of direction is primarily due to the stagnant state of Indian politics.
  •        
  •             A very rough guide to India IE - 05:12 AM
  • Dear David Cameron, This is your first trip as British Prime Minister though I know you have been to India before.
  •        
  •             A case of exploding mangoes IE - 05:12 AM
  • There is much about American policy in South Asia that is mysterious and mystifying but Hillary Clinton's offer to help Pakistan sell its mangoes is about as mysterious as it gets.
  •        
  •             'There is no point in the PM saying Naxalism is a grave situation. What are you doing as PM? IE - 05:12 AM
  • Seema Chishti: What is the difference between the BJP you left and the one you have rejoined?
  • I didn't leave the party, I was required to exit—and I was invited back. I am very touched by both Advaniji and Nitin Gadkari's gesture. Advaniji was very gracious. He called me to inquire whether I would even talk to him. The new president of the party, Nitin Gadkari, came to my house.
  •        
  •             Surrogate practice FE - 03:03 AM
  • The move to allow international audit firms to carry out audits in India apparently gives an impression to the general readers that these firms are not operating in India at the moment.
  •        
  •             A Dream IE - Sat, Jul 24
  • Post-Inception, dreams are totally cool. So, I will abandon my inhibition and write about a dream I frequently have.
  •        
  •             Pulses heartbeat IE - Sat, Jul 24
  • Crops are grown outside our towns. Anger over food prices grows in our towns. Put these two facts together, and you can figure out exactly how divorced, sometimes, the justifiable concern about food inflation is from the cold realities of agriculture.
  •        
  •             Three clever by half IE - Sat, Jul 24
  • Just about a few months back ('Pak daydream, wake-up call', IE, March 20) I had written that the Pakistani establishment suffers from periodic bursts of delusion, about once in eight years or so.
  •        
  •             Feeding both the prisoner and the jailer IE - Sat, Jul 24
  • I was intrigued to see several recent calls for bids by the US Agency for International Development for programmes that would, among other things, train young Arabs how to better use the Internet and other digital technologies for political activism, advocacy, greater transparency and accountability, and other such democratic practices.
  •        
  •             Politics of slight IE - Sat, Jul 24
  • The omens for the monsoon session of Parliament are clear. On Friday, senior BJP leaders pleaded their inability to keep a luncheon appointment with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, citing the CBI summons to Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah.
  •        
  •             The arithmetic of dal, atta and rice IE - Sat, Jul 24
  • During the last six months, much debate has focused on the "price rise" in agricultural commodities, especially in the price of food.
  •        
  •             Unveiling the truth IE - Sat, Jul 24
  • It would not be entirely correct to assume that the animated discussion these days on the subject of the burqa necessarily reflects a concern for the rights of Muslim women.
  •        
  •             Printline pakistan IE - Sat, Jul 24
  • Hillary comes visiting
  • US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Pakistan this week. The News reported on July 18: "Clinton called for 'additional steps' from Pakistan against terrorism... Should an attack against the US be traced to Pakistan, it would have a very devastating impact on our relationship,' she added.
  •        
  •             The dream lives IE - Sat, Jul 24
  • It started as a dare. When MIT Media Lab visionary Nicholas Negroponte promised to bring affordable computing to children in developing countries with the One Laptop Per Child project, India's HRD ministry rejected the idea. We didn't need the largesse, because we had the smarts and economies of scale to make a $10 laptop, it claimed.
  •        
  •             Keeping up the acts IE - Sat, Jul 24
  • The monsoon session of Parliament will be held from July 26 to August 27. The UPA government has not been able to meet its legislative targets in the last couple of sessions.
  •        
  •             Duping Uncle Sam IE - Sat, Jul 24
  • In the three Indo-Pak wars, the only beneficiary from the American perspective is their military-industrial complex.
  •        
  •             FE Editorial : Sound banking FE - Sat, Jul 24
  • Banks are posting robust results in the quarter ended June this year, largely on the back of strong credit growth, led in particular by the telecom sector.
  •        
  •             Behind the curve? FE - Sat, Jul 24
  • Reserve Bank of India's credit policy is due later this month. The latest data for industrial production and prices released in July will make RBI's policy dilemma worse. Industrial production declined in May while core inflation rose sharply.
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The United States has asked India to remain engaged with Pakistan to bridge the trust deficit between both neighbours.
"We understand that there are difficult issues that will over time be a subject of that ongoing dialogue," The Daily Times quoted P.J. Crowley, U.S. State Department spokesman, as saying.
"However, we can certainly continue, as we always have, to encourage India to sit down, talk at high levels, engage in the issues that have created tensions between the two countries in the past," he added.
Crowley also said that Washington wants both New Delhi and Islamabad to work together to combat terrorism in the region.
"We certainly want to see both India and Pakistan cooperate together along with other countries in the region to combat terrorism, which is a threat to all of us," Crowley said.
"But ultimately, how this proceeds, at what pace - these are decisions to be made respectively by Pakistan and India," he added.
The spokesman also reaffirmed the Obama administration's promise to stay engaged in its war against terrorism in Afghanistan.
"The fact is we're not leaving Afghanistan or the region at the end of next year," Crowley said.
"Our commitment to regional security is a significant one. We are going to be engaged with countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, India for a long time, because it is in our interest to do so," he added.

Protest in London to stop mining project in Orissa

London, July 25 (IANS) Human rights activists will paint their faces to resemble the blue-faced Na'vis in the Hollywood film 'Avatar' to protest the dislocation of tribals by mining company Vedanta in the Niyamgiri hills of India's Orissa state.
The protest will be staged Wednesday on the occasion of Vedanta's annual shareholders meeting.
A human rights campaign group, Survival International, has hired makeup artists for the novel form of protest. It likens Vedanta to the multinational company featured in 'Avatar' and the Dongria Kondh tribals of Orissa to the Na'vi people who fight the multinational's anti-people policies.
'Vedanta should halt its operations in the region and postpone further development pending the outcome of talks with local people, whose wishes should be respected in accordance with international guidelines. Like the Na'vi, the Kondh tribals are also at risk. The (proposed) mine will destroy the forests on which the Kondh depend and wreck the lives of thousands,' Survival International said in a statement.
The controversial mining company is already facing protests from Amnesty International, the Church of England and Britain-based charity Joseph Rowntree Trust.
Vedanta is a British mining company headquartered in London.

Lashkar-e-Taiba has become global threat: Mullen

Islamabad, July 25 (IANS) The Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) has become 'a very dangerous organisation and a significant regional and global threat', Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said.
Talking to reporters at the US embassy here, Mullen stressed Saturday that there was a strong need to take stern action to stop LeT's activities. He said LeT was expanding into Afghanistan and other countries beyond the region, the Daily Times reported.
Mullen also supported the statement of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the presence of Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan.
'They are hiding in a very secure place and it is very difficult to trace them,' he said. He claimed that the tribal belt on Pakistan's western border had become the 'global headquarters' for Al Qaeda.
Mullen said that the Pakistani government had not taken any action against the Haqqani network. 'The Haqqani group is the most lethal network faced by the US-led international forces in Afghanistan,' he said.
He said the US and Pakistan were very strong allies in the war against terrorism and the US had a strong desire to extend help and cooperation to Pakistan.
Referring to the planned withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, Mullen said it would not be the end of the mission, rather 'it will be the start of a process'. 'The US military will stay there (Afghanistan) till complete revival of peace,' he said.

Al Qaeda racism could deter black African recruits: Report

New York, July 25 (ANI): A National Counter Terrorism Center terrorism bulletin from October 2009 has come out with the argument that highlighting al Qaeda racism could deter black African recruits.
The Oct. 19, 2009 "National Terrorism Bulletin," obtained by ABC News, is headlined "Highlighting AQIM's Racism Could Deter Black African Recruits."
AQIM is an acronym for Al Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb, a terrorist group based in Algeria that the NCTC says was "originally formed in 1998 as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), a faction of the Armed Islamic Group, which was the largest and most active terrorist group in Algeria.
The GSPC was renamed in January 2007 after the group officially joined al-Qa'ida in September 2006. The GSPC had close to 30,000 members at its height, but the Algerian Government's counter-terrorism efforts have reduced the group's ranks to fewer than 1,000."
The NCTC concluded that a "strategic communications campaign that spotlights the cultural and racial insensitivities" that AQIM "holds towards blacks in North and West Africa probably would hinder the group's growing efforts to attract black recruits in those areas. Widespread discrimination against black Africans is a contentious issue in North and West Africa, particularly in regions where slavery still exists..."
The bulletin says that some recruits "claimed that AQIM was clearly racist against some black members from West Africa because they were only sent against lower-level targets."
Elaborating on the president's comments, a White House official told ABC News that the message was: "al Qaeda is a racist organization that treats black Africans like cannon fodder and does not value human life."
The NCTC analyst suggested "highlighting AQIM's preferential treatment of Arabs and exploitation of blacks probably would resonate with the local black populations.
Some black Africans probably would be receptive to messages comparing AQIM's treatment of black Africans to the condition of slave castes in their countries.
Nearly 500,000 black Mauritanians, 43,000 black Nigerians, and 7,000 black Malians are enslaved from birth, often by Arabs or white Moors. (ANI)

Criticising the government's Mining Bill, FICCI has said that the proposed legislation would adversely impact investments in the sector.

It also termed the government's scheme to provide shareholdings to tribals in mining projects as flawed.

In a recent letter to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, FICCI Secretary General Amit Mitra said that the proposed act will "adversely affect the industry".

"...the latest draft of the Mines and Minerals Development and Regulation Act 2010 proposes measures... that will adversely affect the industry and its viability and thus deter the flow of investments into the sector," Mitra said.

On the scheme of giving 26 per cent equity or annuity to locals and tribals affected by the mining project, the industry body said that the proposal was "complex" and "difficult" to implement.

Elaborating on the issue, it said that persons with vested interests may buy the shareholdings of tribals/local people and eventually gain control over the company.

"It is mandatory for a listed company to have 25 per cent float in the market. If 26 per cent--out of the balance 75 per cent--is allotted as compensation, the promoter will become vulnerable to hostile takeovers," Mitra said.

It also said that investments in the sector would take a hit as "no shareholders would like to invest where 26 per cent of the shareholders do not make any contribution to the company".

The scheme would also lead to social and economic inequality as the people affected by the projects will derive benefits, while the rest of the population will not get any, he added.

Last week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said that the rights of tribals to forests must be protected.

"Development schemes have not worked well in...the areas inhabited by the adivasi population. We must make a concerted effort to bridge the development deficit in these backward areas and reduce whatever sense of alienation that may exist among the adivasis," Singh had said.

As an alternative to the scheme of giving equity, Mitra suggested that the government should consider giving one-time fixed compensation to the locals. In the Bill, the Mines Ministry had proposed to make affected tribal families shareholders in the projects, a policy that aimed to help uplift them.

Besides this, Mitra opposed provisions like competitive bidding of mining blocks, central and state cess, and high security deposit for land -- fixed at Rs 1 lakh per hectare.

The Central Government is working on the new mining legislation, which is currently being reviewed by a 10-member Group of Ministers, to make mining allocation expeditious and transparent.

Companies eye the purchasing power of rural youth
25 Jul 2010, 0008 hrs IST,Monica Behura,ET Bureau

NEW DELHI: Last month, when a group of eight top global investors met in London to ponder over their next India strategy, all they wanted to know was how to go 'rural'. They had been advised by experts that the country's hinterland was no more the challenge that it was two decades ago, when the economy was first opened up. Prosperity in the villages was slowly starting to outdo the scope of urban India—Bharat was blossoming into the next big opportunity.

Deutsche Bank, which facilitated the London meeting, invited Pradeep Kashyap of MART, an Indian consultancy specialising in emerging and rural markets, to make a presentation. Kashyap told the eclectic group that all they needed to do was to tap the village youth.

The same man had years ago helped FMCG major Hindustan Lever (now Hindustan Unilever) co-create Project Shakti to appoint women micro entrepreneurs among village self help groups as the company's salespersons. He was a strong believer in the concept of opinion makers such as the village headman or the quintessential postman to influence the villagers' buying decision. So, why was he now talking about the power of India's rural youth?

Part of the reason is the success of the government's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which promised 100 days of guaranteed employment with an income of `100 a day. With 43 mn new jobs (1.82 billion new mandays), the village economy became a big draw for the village youth. Young people not only decided against migration, those who had already migrated began returning home. At the same time, better power scenario, good connectivity with the cities and access to communication facilities such as mobiles and satellite televisions improved not only the standard of life in far flung villages, but also increased awareness and enhanced aspiration levels. As a result, rural spending in the last three years quadrupled to a whopping `40,000 cr.

"The nature of the spending shows that the biggest driver of the economy is the youth. Young people are earning money, spending on their daily chores and are still left with enough disposable incomes. All that money is going, or will go, into buying vehicles, TVs, mobiles, FMCG products, clothes and a decent education for the next generation," says Sujit Nair, chief executive officer of Linterland, a rural marketing agency of Lowe Worldwide.

Take a look at the facts. The rural market already contributes more than half of FMCG and durables sales, 100% of agri-products sales, and nearly 40% of automobile sales. In the last few years, the biggest push to India's mobile telephony story has come from the hinterland where 175 million connections have been sold—and this is expected to rise to 440 million by 2012. Half of life insurance policies are also sold in India's villages.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Corporate-Trends//articleshow/6212016.cms

Debt-hit Vidarbha farmers stare at land loss

23 Jul 2010, 0426 hrs IST,ET Bureau

MUMBAI: Scores of farmers mired in debt in the arid cotton belt of Vidarbha in Maharashtra are close to losing their property rights, as the state-controlled Land Development Bank has kick-started the process to recover dues from them.

A top revenue ministry official said the process to recover loans by selling off land belonging to those farmers who have defaulted is "definitely on" and could start as early as July 23. SK Goel, principal secretary,
co-operation and marketing, declined comment.

It is now a well-accepted fact that mega loan amnesty schemes, such as the ` 71,000-crore waiver announced by the central government and the state's ` 6,240-crore loan waiver, excluded many farmers in the state. The waiver was applicable only for loans contracted from a government-backed institution. But in the hinterland, most farmers borrow from money lenders. Many of them could not avail of the amnesty schemes, as the eligibility was restricted to those having two hectares or below.

More-than-half of Vidarbha's 35-lakh farmers own more than two hectares and, therefore, according to the government scheme, can only obtain a loan waiver of 25% of their outstanding loan instead of a total write-off. These stiff terms for the loan waiver kept out a large number of farmers in the region.

Now, the state government wants to recover the remaining 75% of the loans that have not been paid back until now. "According to rules, the Land Development Bank needs to recover loans within five years from disbursement. More delay than the stipulated time makes it mandatory for the bank to recover its dues by selling the immovable assets, in this case, the land," an official associated with the exercise told ET.

He said necessary orders to take over the properties of farmers have been issued and the powers to take possession of defaulters' land have been vested with the respective district deputy registrars. "These officials have demanded police protection. This is being extended to complete the process," a Nagpur-based government official said.

The meeting convened by the district deputy registrars on Wednesday has finalised the process of loan recovery in the suicide-prone districts of Yavatmal, Akola, Washim, Wardha, Amaravati and Buldhana. "We are shocked to know about the loan recovery orders. It's inhuman for the state to begin forceful recovery by auctioning land property.

Nothing can be worse for the distressed farmers," said Kishore Tiwari, president Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti. The Samiti and other such organisations have decided to launch an agitation from Friday to oppose the state's loan recovery drive.

A top union agriculture ministry official, when asked to comment on the issue, admitted that the loan recovery process has been launched. "There is a motive behind it. The recovery drive will pressure the government to waive off the remaining portion of the loan too," he said.

US on Headley issue: Expect India to fulfil responsibility

With Indian officials going public with what LeT operative David Headley had told investigators, the US said it fully expects "both countries to live up to their respective responsibilities".
Amid reports that the Obama administration was upset over Indian officials going into the details provided by Headley, State Department spokesman P J Crowley said the US values cooperation with India on combating terrorism but it places responsibility on both countries.
"We fully expect both countries to live up to their respective responsibilities," Crowley told reporters at his daily news conference.
Crowley was responding to a question about an Indian media report that stated that the US is upset about the statements coming out from senior Indian officials, revealing details of information the Mumbai terror suspect provided to Indian interrogators recently.

US not prepared to deal with a nuclear attack: Report

America's ability to deal with a nuclear attack has been eroded over the years and the country is woefully unprepared for any kind of nuclear attack, a Pentagon report has suggested.
The report has urged the Defense Department to take steps to enhance nuclear survivability as terms its findings as a 'wake-up call' to Pentagon.
The threat of a nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States, that was rampant during the Cold War era, has receded with changing times. So has the US' capability to tackle the consequences of a nuclear attack, it said.
The United States no longer possesses the know-how to deal with an atomic assault, the study said, describing the lack of expertise as dangerous.
"The nation lacks a clear understanding of the response to nuclear radiation exposure," the report said.
"The technical expertise and infrastructure to help remedy the situation has decayed significantly. Investments in addressing nuclear survivability has declined precipitously," it laments.
It adds that the root cause of the situation lies in the "corporate point of view among the Department of Defense leadership" that has developed since the end of the Cold War about these matters.
The Pentagon study pointed out that a number of factors had contributed to the deterioration in such an ability, including the fact that since the First Gulf War the DOD has been focusing on building up conventional weapons, which had displaced the significance of nuclear deterrence.
"As a result... fewer and fewer military and civilian leaders have had experience with nuclear weapons and issues around them... and the downward spiral continues," it said.
The study warned that enhanced US capabilities in the conventional weapons arena may further push its enemies to adopt nuclear tactics and urged the DOD and the US government to change the prevailing indifference to nuclear deterrence.
"The task force also believes that this point of view is profoundly wrong and dangerous," it said.
"The task force is not sure how to change the mindset just described, other than to urge DOD leadership to heed the wake-up call that this report is intended to provide".
The report recommended that nuclear survivability should become a 'routine issue' for the leadership like it was in the Cold War era but in the present context of "horizontal proliferation by both state and non-state actors".

Blair's Iraq war 'gave Bin Laden his jihad,' claims ex MI5 Chief

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's order to go to war against Iraq in 2003 along with the United States 'gave Bin Laden his jihad,' claims the director-general of MI5 Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller.
"Arguably we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not before," she added.
Sky News quoted Manningham-Buller as telling the Lord Chilcot led Iraq Inquiry that the UK's involvement in Iraq gave "fresh impetus" to "home-grown" terrorists who saw the attack on Saddam Hussein as an attack on Islam.
"Our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people, not a whole generation, a few among a generation who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an attack on Islam," she said.
She repeatedly warned ministers of the increased threat but was forced to ask for the MI5 budget to be doubled as a consequence, she told the inquiry.
"We were overburdened with intelligence on a broad scale that was pretty well more than we could cope with in terms of plots, leads to plots and things that we needed to pursue," she said.
The report also quoted him saying that invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein allowed al-Qaida to establish a foothold in Iraq which it had never previously managed.
Earlier, previous witnesses told the Inquiry that the 9/11 attacks prompted a steep change in American policy towards Iraq.
Manningham-Buller visited Washington on a number of occasions after the Twin Tower attacks and she told the Inquiry that she detected a split in opinion within US government departments.
She argued that the Government's analysis of a possible increased terror threat to the UK turned out to be correct, but disagreed with the idea that Saddam's possession of 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' (WMD) posed a threat to the nation.
"There is no credible intelligence to suggest that connection between 9/11 and Saddam. That was the judgment of the CIA. It was not a judgment that found favour in some parts of the American machine," she added. (ANI)

Farm sector may achieve 3-3.5 pc growth in 11th plan

India's farm sector is likely to grow by 3-3.5 per cent annually during the 11th Five-Year Plan ending 2011-12, lower than the target of four per cent, the Planning Commission said.

"The rate of growth in agriculture in the Eleventh Plan is likely to be better than in the Tenth Plan. However, it may not reach the target of four per cent per year and instead range between 3 to 3.5 per cent per year," according to a Commission's note for discussion in the National Development Council meeting on July 24.

The Plan Panel, however, noted that agriculture production in 2010-11 would be better compared to last year, when the crop was severely hit by the worst drought in 32 years.

The agriculture sector, which contributes 17 per cent to GDP and employs 60 per cent of the population, grew by 0.2 per cent in 2009-10 fiscal. In the first three year of the current plan period, the average growth was 2.2 per cent.

The Planning Commission emphasised on undertaking steps to increase production so that the four per cent growth target is "at least achieved in the Twelfth Plan period".

"Food Security will continue to be an important concern and we need to plan for growth in foodgrain production of around 2 to 2.5 per cent per year," the note said.

The allied sectors (including dairy and fisheries) will have to grow at 6-7 per cent, it added. Highlighting important steps taken in the last few years, Plan Panel said that greater efforts were needed to achieve the targeted growth. The Commission noted that bio-technology holds great potential for expanding agri-productivity, but it also "raises concerns about safety in connection with the introduction of GM technology in foods".

The panel suggested that it was essential to establish a regulatory system that will ensure that safety is not compromised.

"The central government should expedite the establishment of statutory Bio-technology Regulatory Board, with appropriate scientific expertise as quickly as possible," the note said. The panel asked states to pay more attention to agriculture development by strengthening research, extension system, state agri-universities and encouraging private sector in seed development.

Describing extension service as the "weakest link", the panel said states should strengthen the extension system. "It is not an exaggeration to say that the extension service has collapsed in most states with large unfilled vacancies and also poor accountability of personnel where they exist," the note said.
RBI, RIL to set tone for the Street; rally may go on
The RBI monetary policy review and Reliance results will set the tone for the Dalal Street this week, analysts said, while expressing optimism that the markets will continue the winning streak for the fourth week on back of strengthening fund inflows.

"Investor sentiment is upbeat and the Dalal Street may see hitting new highs this week. Tracking positive global cues, the market is likely to start the week in the green on Monday," CNI Research chairman and managing director Kishore P Ostwal told PTI. The coming week will be action-packed as the market will be closely watching the RBI policy announcement and the first quarter numbers of the Sensex heavyweight Reliance Industries, both of which are slated for Tuesday. So far, the earnings by most of the corporates have been in line with Street expectations brokers said, adding the market is expecting a good show by the country's largest corporate house on July 27.

Analysts say Reliance Industries' first quarter numbers on Tuesday will be a deciding factor for the markets and will decide the direction in the immediate short-term. According to the brokerage firm ICICIDirect, another key event is the monetary policy announcement by the Reserve Bank on Tuesday.

Any hike rate more than 25 basis points is likely to be a dampener for the markets, it said, adding the market has already factored in a 25 bps policy rate hike. However, most marketmen say they do not see a steep hike in the key policy rates. "We expect a 25 basis points hike in the lending and borrowing (repo and reverse repo) rates in the upcoming monetary policy review by the Reserve Bank," Birla SunLife chief investment officer Vikram Kotak said.

According to analysts, another key factor will be the monthly F&O settlement due Thursday, which is likely to be volatile. Besides, global cues are likely to be positive at least in the early part of the week as the result of the stress tests of European banks has come out without any shocks, say analysts.

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Following the stress tests, wherein only seven out of the 91 European banks failed, the US and European markets closed in the green on Friday. The domestic market maintained the upward march and regained the 18,000 level after 30 months on the back of positive domestic sentiment and strong global cues. The positive momentum during the last three days of the week helped both indices to close at their highest levels since early February 2008. On a week-on-week basis, the BSE Sensex rose by nearly 1 per cent to close at 18,131.

This was visible in the foreign fund flows too. Overseas investors have infused over Rs 10,000 crore ($2.1 billion) so far this month into domestic stocks and analysts believe the inflow will continue. "FIIs are bullish about the India growth story and they will infuse more money in the coming weeks as well," Bonanza Portfolio assistant vice-president Avinash Gupta said.

NRI remittances leading to boom in wealth in villages
25 Jul 2010, 0702 hrs IST,Anirvan Ghosh,ET Bureau
Topics:

When Shreyas Vani, a resident of Karamsad in Gujarat's Anand district, wants to loosen his tired muscles after a hard day's work, he just ambles into a swanky parlour bang in the middle of the village.


"It is just one of many (luxuries of life). Young people in our village yearn for them and want them right here. Money is not a factor," he says, as the latest model of iPod deliberately slips out of his jeans' pocket.


Two thousand kilometers away in Punjab's Jallandhar district, when potato seed farmer, Santokh Singh, wanted to buy a car, he hitched a cab ride to Chandigarh, only to drive back in a brand new Audi A4. He says his fellow farmers are not settling for anything less, so why should he. "Our village has narrow roads, but a broad vision for BMWs, Mercs and Audis," Singh laughs.


Stories such as these redefine rural life as we perceive it. Some villages in India are ahead of the curve and when it comes to luxury, they offer an opportunity to brands, no less secondary to businesses in the metros. Here people want the best cars and branded diamond jewellery. They shop for foreign tours-for travelling as well as study, and use Wi-fi enabled laptops. Here, the raw scent of the farmlands get mixed with the fragrance of a Channel and Diesel.


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The secret is quite an open one, whether the village be in Punjab, Gujarat or Kerala. Remittances from their NRI sons and daughters have led to an unprecedented boom in wealth. In Kerala, near Thiruvalla, lies the Kumbanad-Kozhencheri belt which has a whopping `5,400 crore parked in bank deposits! In Karamsad village, remittances have topped `1,500 crore in banks and post offices.


Take the example of Kerala. Real estate development, the most visible sign of recent prosperity that provided jobs to 25 lakh people in the state is also roaring in Kochi after being hit by the Gulf crisis earlier this year.


Hoardings at city junctions announce the arrival of new luxury apartments, the kinds which are usually found in posh localities of metro cities. Big builders already have more plans.


"A lot of investment had been planned there on the basis of projected demand linked to the expansion of the technology parks, and in homes," says SN Raghuchandran Nair, president of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers. What has this done to villages? Well they look more like a wealthy suburb in a western country than an Indian village.


If this sounds unbelievable, wait till you hear about Asia's richest village. With remittances of over `5,000 crore, people in Madhapar in Gujarat's Kutch district, live life kingsize. Apart from cars like the Jaguar, or BMW 7-series, they are particularly enthused by the brand of cosmetics they use. Jadhavbhai Varsani, who runs a plush supermarket in the town, says that imported cosmetics, from L'Oreal to Dunhill and Diesel, sell like hot cakes.

Corporate social responsibility can cloak irresponsibility

25 Jul 2010, 0311 hrs IST,Swaminathan SA Aiyar,TNN
Topics:
  • BP
  • Goldman Sachs
  • British Petroleum
  • CSR
  • World Economic Forum
  • Greenpeace
  • Exxon
  • ConocoPhillips
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    Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has long been a hot topic globally. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has lectured companies on it. Some corporations have won acclaim and awards for CSR.


    Two of them were BP, the oil giant, and Goldman Sachs, the big investment bank. But BP has just created the greatest environmental disaster in history at its out-of-control Macondo deep-sea well, ruining bird and marine life as well as the livelihoods of fishermen and beach hotels. Goldman Sachs has just paid a whopping fine of $550 million for wrongful investment advice that trapped its clients.


    They are, rightly, being castigated today. But this shows how shallow the CSR concept is, and how it can cloak cynicism and irresponsibility. Thomson-Reuters columnist Chrystia Freeland has called CSR "a fetish encouraged by the philanthropies that feed off it, and funded by the corporate executives who find that it serves their bottom line." Consumers have been willing to pay more and buy more from companies with a CSR halo. Now they should know better.


    CSR award-winners have typically engaged in green activism and philanthropy. British Petroleum changed its name to plain BP, and launched a hugely successful image-building campaign, labeling itself "Beyond Petroleum." This showed BP as a green activist, with a new logo of a green and yellow sun.


    The company boasted it was among the biggest producers of solar panels and wind power, but these accounted for barely 3% of its total business. "Beyond Petroleum" won two "Campaign of the Year" awards from PR Week, and a gold "Effie" award from the American Marketing Association. BP funded green causes and won green plaudits, brushing aside accusations of "greenwashing" by Greenpeace.


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    Fortune magazine has an annual corporate accountability rating for CSR. BP topped the Fortune list in 2004, 2005 and 2007, and came second in 2006. In 2007, BP China won the "The Most Responsible Enterprise" award organized by China News Weekly and the Chinese Red Cross Foundation (CRCF). It also won the Corporate Citizenship Award for Chinese enterprises several times. BP won the 2007 Prime Minister's CSR award in Malaysia for aiding a turtle sanctuary.


    All this CSR was mere image-manship by a company with a horrendous record of cutting corners and neglecting safety. In 2005, a poorly maintained BP refinery exploded in Texas, killing 15 and injuring 180. In 2007, a BP pipeline, corroded through neglect, leaked 200,000 gallons of crude into the pristine Alaskan wilderness. The company paid a fine of $303 million to settle a charge that it had conspired to manipulate the price of propane gas.


    According to the Center for Public Integrity, Washington, BP refineries in Ohio and Texas in the last three years ran up 760 "egregious, willful" safety violations, while rivals Sunoco and ConocoPhillips each had eight, Citgo had two and Exxon had one comparable citation. So, BP accounted for 97% of all corporate refinery violations.
    http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/News-By-Company/Corporate-Trends/Corporate-social-responsibility-can-cloak-irresponsibility/articleshow/6212519.cmsCorporate
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    Making government policies more palatable

    25 Jul 2010, 0028 hrs IST,Mythili Bhusnurmath,ET Bureau

    A majority of the public in the European Union's five largest countries disagree with their governments' decision to let budget deficits rise in order to combat the financial crisis, says a recent Financial Times-Harris poll. Asked if public spending cuts were necessary to help long-term economic recovery, 84% of the French, 71 % of Spaniards, 69% of Britons, 67 % of Germans and 61 % of Italians answered, yes!

    In the US, 73 % of Americans agreed. Most seemed to understand that fiscal prudence, even if it meant fewer freebies today, would be in their long-term interest. And they were willing to make that trade-off even though cost-cutting was likely to push up unemployment and affect living standards adversely. And, surprise, surprise, they agreed high budget deficits and subsequent spending cuts call for a re-examination of Europe's generous welfare state.

    You read that once. And you read it again; this time more slowly, just to ensure your eyes are not playing any tricks on you. Then, having made sure you read it right first time you scratch your head and wonder. Why are Europeans so willing to have their governments cut back on freebies when Indians, even middle-class Indians who don't need handouts, just can't seem to have enough? Witness the loud protests when the government recently withdrew some of the freebies (oil subsidies) that they've been enjoying for so long. And undeservedly!

    Short-term pain for long-term gain! That's a trade off even children understand. Finish your homework then you can go to play is something most of us grew up hearing and, in turn, tell our children now. Yet when it comes to public policy issues, more particularly issues of public spending, the average Indian just doesn't seem to get it.

    While the FT/Harris poll finding may be partly due to higher public awareness after the debt crisis seriously endangered the eurozone, the contrast with India could not be starker. Unlike the European public that seems to understand that if governments focus only on the short-term without keeping an eye on the long-term consequences of their actions, the burden will ultimately fall on ordinary people, the public in India seems to have little or no appreciation of ground realities. Even the educated middle class wants the government to spend more and more, as though there is some bottomless pit from which it can draw resources indefinitely. What explains this inability to appreciate the consequences of fiscal profligacy; to accept some hardship in the short-term in order to improve our prospects, long-term?

    Bharti, Wal-Mart may have to restructure partnership

    24 Jul 2010, 1145 hrs IST,Sruthijith KK,ET Bureau
    Topics:

    NEW DELHI: Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world's largest retailer, may have to change the structure of its partnership with billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal's Bharti group if the government pushes through a controversial new rule governing wholesale trade, a top executive has said.


    "We have sought a clarification from the government... If the rule is not withdrawn, then yes, some changes may be necessary in the corporate structure,' said Bharti Wal-Mart CEO Raj Jain. He was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the inauguration of the company's new retail training institute in New Delhi on Thursday.


    New rules on wholesale trading introduced by the government in April restrain transactions between group companies. A wholesale trading company cannot sell more than 25% of its sales to a group company and that amount should also be only for "internal use", say the rules.


    Bharti Walmart Private Ltd, an equal equity joint venture between Wal-Mart and Bharti group, runs a cash and carry, or wholesale retail store, in Amritsar, and is in the process of opening two more such outlets. This company sells merchandise to Bharti unit Bharti Retail, which operates under the Easyday banner.


    Foreign investment is not allowed in multi-brand retail.


    The present scheme of arrangement between the Indian telecom powerhouse whose interests straddle other businesses such as financial services, real estate and processed foods, and the discount retailer, does not conform to the new rule.


    The government's plan has caused disquiet among retail firms, particularly Bharti Wal-Mart. The company, along with other affected firms, has sought a clarification from the government.


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    In a letter dated April 26 to the finance ministry, Bharti Ventures' group general counsel wrote: "We respectfully submit that both these conditions are arbitrary and discriminate against companies in the same group, besides not being practical...".


    ET reported on July 8 that the finance ministry has recommended scrapping of the "internal use" clause, but the 25% cap on the volume of trade is likely to stay.


    Bharti Enterprises vice-chairman Rajan Mittal, however, was optimistic that the government will change the policy. "We have requested the government that this policy be changed because it is irrational. Why should trade between group companies be limited?" he said.


    He did not say what path the two companies would adopt, should the government persist with the policy. "We will cross the bridge when it comes to that."

    Indra Nooyi, Arundhati Roy among world's 30 most inspiring women: Forbes

    BOSTON: India-born head of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi and author Arundhati Roy have been named by Forbes among the world's 30 most inspiring women, a list that also features Mother Teresa, Oprah Winfrey and Hillary Clinton.


    "Role models mean different things to different people--some of us look for guidance in business, some in our personal lives, some of us strive to make the world a better place each day, some admire trailblazers," Forbes said.


    Activist Roy comes in third on the list while Nooyi ranks 10.


    The '30 Utterly Inspiring Role Models' list has been compiled by ForbesWoman.


    The publication reached out to communities on Facebook and Twitter to determine the most motivating women in the world.


    Media Mogul Oprah Winfrey, who was named the Most Powerful Celebrity by Forbes last month, leads the pack for the most inspirational role model.


    "Winfrey's role model status extends beyond her professional career; her philanthropic work, including the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, is just as inspiring," Forbes said.


    Others named in the list include actor Angelina Jolie, former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, First lady Michelle Obama and author JK Rowling.


    On Rowling, Forbes said, "As a single mother, Rowling took writing stories about a young wizard in a coffee shop and built one of the top-earning literary franchises ever, inspiring movies that have grossed more than $5 billion, spin-off books, theme parks and more".


    Also on the list is Melinda Gates, who has "inspired many by her generosity and pledged more than $650 million to public schools through The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.


    "Their personal histories, outlooks and missions may be different, but each role model sets an example of how to be the best women we possibly can be," the publication said.



    Obama and oil spill: Lessons from corporate world
    As chief executive officer of America Inc, Barack Obama has walked the factory floor when it comes to managing the federal response to the Gulf oil spill, going directly to front-line workers. He's used wiles respected in the boardroom in wringing a $20 billion commitment from BP. But what was that talk about kicking butt? That's so assembly line Ford Motor Co, circa 1930. And why on Earth did it take him so long to talk to BP's chief?

    A real CEO would have had Tony Hayward on the phone in a New York minute.

    The president is not, of course, the head of a company. He's accountable to the public in ways a chief executive is not to shareholders. Governance and politics differ from effective corporate management while sharing certain qualities. But everyone wants to see the get-it-done ethic of the business world play out in the Gulf of Mexico and in the often confused lines of federal authority. A temporary cap on the ruptured well has held since it was attached on July 15; a permanent fix is expected in August. Since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, between 94 million and 184 million gallons have leaked into the Gulf.

    The Gulf calamity, like the presidency itself, is a crash course in executive management for a man who came to office with no such experience to speak of. How's he doing? A mix of real-world CEOs and business theorists interviewed by The Associated Press sketched out qualities of a corporate executive and judged Obama by them:

    Text: Agencies

    Images: Agencies, Gettyimages

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    The economics of aloo, pyaaz and pulses of the nation

    25 Jul 2010, 0744 hrs IST,Abheek Barman,TNN
    Eleven days ago, June's inflation numbers became available at noon . They were a shocker: prices had jumped 10.55% on June 2009. More important, prices had been rising by more than 10% for five months in a row, starting February.

    And yet, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee seemed unperturbed. Just days ago, he told the media he was confident that inflation would halve by year-end. Could he be right?

    "Food inflation is largely under control," says Planning Commission member Saumitra Chaudhuri, "It's manufacturing prices that are driving inflation today and I expect those to cool off by October."

    Here's what the numbers say: between May and June, food inflation fell by just under 1% largely because sugar prices dropped by more than 5%. But if you're shopping and find the price of mangoes and gobhi shockingly high, that impression is correct enough because fruit and vegetable prices shot up by 11% between March and April.

    Milton Friedman, who won the economics Nobel in 1976 once said, "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." In other words, the only way you could have prices going up is when too much money is chasing too few goods. No two economists agree on anything, so it's been a contested statement, but on Tuesday, India's central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) might test out Friedman's hypothesis.

    One way to rein in the amount of money coursing through the economy is to raise interest rates, which could encourage folks to put their money in banks rather than keep it in circulation. The RBI has already raised rates this year. If it does so again this month, it'll suck some cash out of the system.

    It's already cut down on the rate at which it supplies money to the system. In June, money supply grew by the lowest for a year, just 14.5%. If you think that's high, remember the recent peak was a staggering 20.2% in August 2009.

    But the second part of the inflation story, the one that hits us in the gut, is when food prices start heating up. In India, the price of food doesn't follow Friedman's simple money supply driven rule; it takes convoluted paths, many driven by government policies.

    For the major foodgrains, the government sets a minimum support price (MSP) at which it's bound to buy from farmers. Till 2008, these prices were jacked up repeatedly, encouraging farmers to grow more wheat and rice than other crops. Among others, the cultivation of sugarcane and many kinds of pulses fell, points out Pronab Sen, principal advisor to the Planning Commission.

    But dal is the principal protein in many Indian homes and as demand grew steadily, supplies stagnated. There's a limit to how much India can import because no other country eats, and grows, dal the way we do.

    In an effort to get farmers back to growing dal, the government recently hiked its support prices. This could help, but the trouble is that unlike foodgrain, the government doesn't commit to buying dal, so the support price stays a notional one, for farmers to aspire to and traders to pay if they can't get anything cheaper.

    India ranks low in economic freedom: Report

    Factors like high level of corruption, poor investment norms and high inflation among others have made India one of the least economically free countries in the world, a report on Friday said.

    According to an annual repor, Index of Economic Freedom, released here today by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, India is ranked 124 in the world when it comes to economic freedom.

    Interestingly, other BRIC nations--Brazil, Russia and China have also fallen in the category of 'mostly unfree' nations with ranks 113, 143 and 140 respectively.

    Hong Kong has got the highest ranking in the list whereas North Korea remained as the most 'repressed' country, implying least economic freedom, at 179th position, the survey said.

    The report observed that India's tax rates and inflation have been relatively high, with inflation averaging 7.7 per cent between 2006 and 2008. Early this year, another survey conducted by the Foundation had ranked India at 85th out of 179 countries in terms of corruption.

    "India is no doubt considered as a hot destination for FDI...which has improved over the years. But when it comes to economic freedom it fares badly. It is due to issues like high level of corruption and poor investment freedom," Heritage Foundation's Director of Foreign Policy and Defence Studies, Kim R Holmes, told reporters here today.

    Commenting on the survey, Holmes said that there should be a level playing field for the companies to do business, a free trading system and transparency in government procedures to achieve economic freedom. Market
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    Use grain stocks to rein in prices: EAC

    24 Jul 2010, 0316 hrs IST,ET Bureau
    NEW DELHI: The prime minister's economic advisory council, or EAC, has underlined the urgent need to have an effective policy for managing the supply and prices of wheat and rice, as well as cotton, agri commodities that were brought into sharp focus last year.

    Such policy intervention, in addition to a "normal" monsoon, is likely to ease supply position and price expectations through the current year, stabilising food prices in general. However, the EAC acknowledges that food price inflation remains at "unacceptably high levels" although it found an "improvement in the situation" in respect of food prices, especially food grains and sugar. Inflation in food articles is over 12%.

    On the grain front, the panel has recommended leveraging "more than comfortable" public stocks to the optimum to sustain a gradual release into the open market, both for bulk and retail consumers, through the 2010-11 to keep food prices in check. The releases should necessarily be at lower than market rates, especially since higher than open market rates were the key reason for low offtake thus far on the OMSS for bulk users. States too had found the rates too high. Over a longer term, it has said, the stability in farm produce supply should also be sustained through adequate returns through fair support prices to producers.

    In addition, it suggested states should be allowed to sell OMSS retail grain releases through the public distribution system, or PDS. However, using PDS as the sole means of grain distribution could be another key reason why offtake has been low thus far. In view of this, it suggests developing additional distribution channels at the state level.

    The principal contributing factor to inflation in manufactured food products through 2009-10 was the price of sugar. This category, including sugar, will see inflation drop sharply in 2010-11. However, price pressure in manufactured goods was likely to continue to remain high, the Council has said.

    For pulses, prices of which have remained at a steady high through last year, the Council has pinned the entire burden of price de-escalation on hopes of a good monsoon this summer.

    "Output is expected to be higher in the 2010-11 kharif season on account of special efforts taken and also more favourable rainfall conditions and this is expected to take the edge off prices, especially in arhar/tur," it contends. In the case of cotton, the Council has emphasized that policy for 2010-11 must find an "even balance" between the grower and the domestic user and that exports targets for the next year should be fixed at the end of the previous year on the basis of estimated production, domestic use by industry and availability for exports. Cotton was transferred from the OGL list to the restricted list in May 2010 and exports were allowed only under license by the DGFT subsequently.

    The targets for exports should be relaxed only if home prices fall below a threshold level, it says, urging the government to resort to duty levy rather than imposing a de facto physical ban. The former would be consistent with WTO regulations.

    Interestingly, the suggestion on public food grain stocks is a deviation, if not a U-turn, from the suggestions of the Abhijit Sen's expert panel on a long term foodgrain policy in 2002. That panel had suggested de-escalation of food stocks with the government besides reducing the powers of the FCI. It also maintained that high and politically-propelled support rates for crops compelled farmers to sell to the government and reduce demand.

    Mobile telephony has begun enhance agricultural productivity: Study

    22 Jul 2010, 2229 hrs IST,Prabha Jagannathan,ET Bureau
    NEW DELHI: The first ever paper to look at the impact of farm information-enabled mobile telephony on small farmers has concluded that while it has begun to enhance agricultural productivity at different levels, it needs significant improvements in order to achieve full productivity-enhancing potential.

    Erratic services and irrelevant information dominate at present, instead. Among the states studied (the relevant services are not available countrywide yet), small farmers from Maharashtra (income between Rs 12-17,000/month) reported the highest use of their phones to access information, leading to diverse benefits.

    These included yield improvements, price realisation and better adjustment of supply to market demand. They could also afford more personalised services and superior text messages.

    In contrast, benefits were limited only to improvement in yields among low income farmers of UP and Rajasthan. Awareness on the range of customer support service provided in these states was low, restricting two-way communication. Significant improvements in supporting infrastructure and capacity building amongst farmers are critical, the study Socio-economic Impact of Mobile Phones on Indian Agriculture contends.

    Small and marginal farmers, who are the vast majority of 127.3 million cultivators in India, are often unable to consistently access information that could increase yields and lead to better prices for crops. A 2005 NSSO survey found that only 40% of farmer households accessed information about agricultural techniques and inputs. Authors Surabhi Mittal et al conclude that mobiles are still primarily used for social purposes. If tipping point to amplify the impact of mobile phones on productivity and farm revenues is to be reached, greater customisation and frequent updating should first add substantial value to services.

    One key takeaway from the study : For a true revolution to occur, farmers must get information at a time and place of their choosing. Rarely do these sources provide the farmer with access to consistent, reliable, updated information that is tailored for his use. Further, no single source was able to provide the breadth of information required by the farmer through the demands of the farm cycle, the study contends, the study says.

    Takeaway 2: There are many takers for localised weather/rainfall reports.

    Takeaway 3: input dealers still work as crucial information purveyors, making sense for government policy to tap into this.

    That farmers benefit from the introduction of mobile-enabled information services is borne out by the increasing number of subscribers to these services. But despite owning less than 5 acres of land, the study found, small farmers remained parched for customised information on many subjects including new and short duration crops, when to sow, new cropping methods, application of fertilisers, market price information etc. This, although mobile communication is a highly personalised mode of information access.

    Small farmers, prioritised weather, plant protection (disease/pest control), seed information and market prices as the most important issues. Close to 90% of UP and Rajasthan farmers studied ranked seed information as the highest priority while over 70% cited market prices as most important.

                   

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    • Guru Poornima celebrated across IndiaANI - 08:15 PM
    • Thousands of devotees flocked various religious places across India on Sunday to offer their prayers on the occasion of Guru Poornima.
    • Amit shah surfaces, surrenders to CBIANI - 08:15 PM
    • Former Gujarat Minister of State for Home,Amit Shah, who was untraceable since Thursday,appeared before media in Ahemdabad on Sunday.

    Politics

    • Nearly 68,000 elected representatives take oath in HaryanaIANS - 08:06 PM
    • Kurukshetra (Haryana), July 25 (IANS) Nearly 68,000 elected representatives of panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) were collectively administered the oath of office by Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda here Sunday.
    • Bomb explodes as Bangkok votes, wounding eightReuters - 06:58 PM
    • A bomb exploded in Bangkok on Sunday, wounding at least eight people, as the city voted in a by-election that could signal whether recent unrest has changed Thailand's political landscape.
    • Rain keeps people away from BJP's protest marchIANS - 07:26 PM
    • Ahmedabad, July 25 (IANS) The 'maun' (silent) procession called by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) here Sunday evening against the arrest of former Gujarat minister Amit Shah evoked a dull response with less than a 1,000 people braving the rains to join the protest.
    • Shah joins other accused in Sabarmati jailIANS - 07:19 PM
    • Ahmedabad, July 25 (IANS) Gujarat's former minister Amit Shah Sunday joined the other accused in the 2005 Sohrabuddin Sheikh killing at the historic Sabarmati Jail here, where Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak were imprisoned during the freedom struggle.
    • Opposition demands discussion on price riseIANS - 07:14 PM
    • New Delhi, July 25 (IANS) A day ahead of the monsoon session of parliament, opposition parties Sunday demanded a discussion on price rise under an adjournment motion 'if the house is to run peacefully', an opposition leader said.

    Features

    • Man and woman? You're a double-deckerHT - 02:10 PM
    • India, July 24 -- The predominantly Catholic Argentina became the first Latin American country to allow gay marriages last week.
    • Wibberley mom and son riding high in IndiaHT - 02:10 PM
    • New Delhi, July 24 -- "Give me a moment to watch my son ride," says a polite Linda Wibberley, watching 19-year-old cyclist Benjamin swing by on his bike.
    • 'I'm happy it is a philosophical and scientific breakthrough'HT - 02:10 PM
    • India, July 24 -- On May 20 this year, world-renowned scientist Dr J Craig Venter and his team made history by synthetically creating a living, self-replicating cell for the first time.
    • Chug de IndiaHT - 01:35 PM
    • India, July 24 -- Right outside the bustling Neral railway station in Maharashtra's Raigad district, a tiny train awaits its next batch of passengers.
    • Time to go fort-spottingHT - 01:35 PM
    • Mumbai, July 25 -- They may be dry and dusty in the summer, but the Sahyadris come alive in the monsoon.

    Crime

    • Case against teacher for hitting studentHT - 01:35 PM
    • Kolkata, July 25 -- Within two months of the Rouvanjit Rawla episode at La Martiniere, another Kolkata school finds itself embroiled in a case of corporal punishment.
    • Chargesheet details Kauserbi 'murder'HT - 01:35 PM
    • Ahmedabad, July 25 -- The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which chargesheeted Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah, has evidence involving his complicity in the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh's wife Kauserbi at a farmhouse on the Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar road.
    • Snatchers shoot man trying to save his wife from themHT - 01:35 PM
    • New Delhi, July 24 -- A 29-year-old area manager of a pharmaceutical company was shot at by two bike-borne assailants.
    • Rs 7.5 lakh snatchedHT - 01:35 PM
    • New Delhi, July 24 -- Bike-borne assailants snatched Rs 7.5 lakh from two Rohini residents within a gap of 20 minutes on Saturday.
    • Two waiters arrested for killing managerHT - 01:35 PM
    • Mumbai, July 25 -- The police on Friday arrested two waiters of Durgaprasad hotel in Bandra, for allegedly killing their manager and stealing Rs 6,000. The manager had reportedly slapped one of them.

                       
                       
                                

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    PM asks State Chiefs to strengthen ... ANI - Sat, Jul 24

    While addressing a meeting of the National Development Council (NDC) in New Delhi on Saturday Indian Prime Minister,Manmohan Singh has asked state chiefs to strengthen the agricultural sector to ...
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    • Amit Shah's resignation has come too late: ...ANI - Sat, Jul 24
    • Congress on Saturday said that the resignation of Gujarat Minister of State for Home Amit Shah,an accused in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case,has come too late in the day.
    • Regional forum in calls 12-hour shutdown in ...ANI - Sat, Jul 24
    • Activists of Bangla O Bangla Bhasha Bachao Committee (BOBBBC) (Bengal and Bengali Language Protection Committee),a regional non-political group, has called for a 12 hour shutdown in Siliguri.
    • Locals in Bihar join fight against red terrorANI - Sat, Jul 24
    • Maoist threat has become one of the major internal challenges for the government. With paramilitary forces and state police fighting against naxal menace.
    • Fire breaks out in a chemical factory in GujaratANI - Sat, Jul 24
    • A major fire engulfed a chemical factory in the industrial township of Ankleshwar in Gujarat in the early hours on Saturday morning.
    • Kishenji aide,3 other Maoists arrested in WBANI - Sat, Jul 24
    • A close aide of top Maoist leader Kishenji and main accused in the Jharkhand MP Sunil Mahato's murder case was arrested from a forest in Salboni in West Midnapore district on Friday.
    • 80 children fall sick after consumption of ...ANI - Sat, Jul 24
    • Around 80 students fell sick after consumption of reported unhygienic midday meal at a government school in Pune on Friday.
    • Floods wreak havoc in various parts of Uttar ...ANI - Sat, Jul 24
    • Normal life in various parts of Uttar Pradesh has been badly hit as many areas experienced flood or flood like situation on Friday due to incessant rainfall.
    • Anamika Khanna and JJ Valaya shine on fourth ...ANI - Sat, Jul 24
    • Top designers Anamika Khanna and JJ Valaya showcased modish traditional Indian wear and western wear with Indian craft on the fourth day of Delhi Couture Week in New Delhi on Friday.
    • Narendra Modi lashes out at congress,says ...ANI - Sat, Jul 24
    • Gujarat Chief Minster Narendra Modi finally broke his silence on Saturday and slammed Congress for allegedly using CBI against his minister Amit Shah and fabricating false charges against him.
    • Six militants surrender in ManipurANI - Sat, Jul 24
    • Six hardcore militants, belonging to three banned militant outfits, surrendered before the top brass of the state police in Manipur on Friday.
    • Wipro Q1 profit rises up to 31%ANI - Sat, Jul 24
    • Wipro, India's third largest IT Company, saw its net profit grow by 31% to Rs 1,319 crore in the quarter ended June 30, 2010.
    • India, US ink counter-terror pactANI - Sat, Jul 24
    • In a major boost to the relations between India and United States of America, both countries signed a Counter-Terror Cooperation agreement in New Delhi on Friday.
    • Inflation would ease to 7-8% by December: C ...ANI - Sat, Jul 24
    • Ahead of the Reserve Bank of India's monetary policy, scheduled for July 27, C. Rangarajan, the chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council on Friday called for strong monetary ...
    • Maoists kill former 'Salwa Judum' leaderANI - Fri, Jul 23
    • Maoists killed a former leader of the 'Salwa Judum', the local militia in Gunlapanta area of Bijapur in Chhattisgarh.
    • Women BSF guards to be part of retreat ...ANI - Fri, Jul 23
    • Females entered yet another hitherto foray of male as female BSF constables would become part of The Retreat ceremony at the Wagah Border For the first time female constables have been trained ...
    • RJD flays Nitish Kumar over lathi charge on ...ANI - Fri, Jul 23
    • RJD supremo Lalu Prasad accused Nitish Kumar on Friday for coordinating a murderous attack against protesting members his party.
    • Petrol pump strike in west Bengal,people ...ANI - Fri, Jul 23
    • Around 2,000 petrol pump dealers across West Bengal called for a 24 hour strike on Friday to protest the irrational policies of the major oil companies in the country.
    • Heavy rains wreak havoc in various parts of IndiaANI - Fri, Jul 23
    • The unpredictable nature of monsoon has shown its face once again.
    • BJP decides to skip PM lunchANI - Fri, Jul 23
    • BJP on Friday refused Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's invitation for lunch ahead of the Monsoon session of Parliament, apparently angry over the CBI summoning Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah in ...
    • An Affair to Remember collection rules third ...ANI - Fri, Jul 23
    • The third day of the Couture Week showcased 'An Affair to Remember' collection in New Delhi on Thursday.

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    Opinions and Editorials

           

       

    Efforts off track

    IE - 05:12 AM
    The breakdown in diplomatic talks between India and Pakistan in Islamabad is despite the best efforts of interested third parties, most notably the US. In the last six months, funds for Track Two diplomacy through journalists, retired bureaucrats and academics have increased manifold.
           
            View:         Headlines Only |         Include Summaries |         Include Photos        
                
           
    •             Art magnifies imagination IE - 05:12 AM
    • History has documented different eras that have taken business forward. Technology advancement in the 19th century established the mechanical age, the 20th century belonged to electronic technology while the 21st century is proving to be based on digital technology. Last week, I'd touched upon musical breakthroughs in different eras that contributed to business success.
    •        
    •             India needs new politics IE - 05:12 AM
    • India is adrift. Worrisomely adrift. This is not because of any widespread social unrest or destabilising economic problems. Discontent in society there certainly is. Grievances due to the country's unbalanced economic growth there certainly are and they are mounting. But the lack of direction is primarily due to the stagnant state of Indian politics.
    •        
    •             A very rough guide to India IE - 05:12 AM
    • Dear David Cameron, This is your first trip as British Prime Minister though I know you have been to India before.
    •        
    •             A case of exploding mangoes IE - 05:12 AM
    • There is much about American policy in South Asia that is mysterious and mystifying but Hillary Clinton's offer to help Pakistan sell its mangoes is about as mysterious as it gets.
    •        
    •             'There is no point in the PM saying Naxalism is a grave situation. What are you doing as PM? IE - 05:12 AM
    • Seema Chishti: What is the difference between the BJP you left and the one you have rejoined?
    • I didn't leave the party, I was required to exit—and I was invited back. I am very touched by both Advaniji and Nitin Gadkari's gesture. Advaniji was very gracious. He called me to inquire whether I would even talk to him. The new president of the party, Nitin Gadkari, came to my house.
    •        
    •             Surrogate practice FE - 03:03 AM
    • The move to allow international audit firms to carry out audits in India apparently gives an impression to the general readers that these firms are not operating in India at the moment.
    •        
    •             A Dream IE - Sat, Jul 24
    • Post-Inception, dreams are totally cool. So, I will abandon my inhibition and write about a dream I frequently have.
    •        
    •             Pulses heartbeat IE - Sat, Jul 24
    • Crops are grown outside our towns. Anger over food prices grows in our towns. Put these two facts together, and you can figure out exactly how divorced, sometimes, the justifiable concern about food inflation is from the cold realities of agriculture.
    •        
    •             Three clever by half IE - Sat, Jul 24
    • Just about a few months back ('Pak daydream, wake-up call', IE, March 20) I had written that the Pakistani establishment suffers from periodic bursts of delusion, about once in eight years or so.
    •        
    •             Feeding both the prisoner and the jailer IE - Sat, Jul 24
    • I was intrigued to see several recent calls for bids by the US Agency for International Development for programmes that would, among other things, train young Arabs how to better use the Internet and other digital technologies for political activism, advocacy, greater transparency and accountability, and other such democratic practices.
    •        
    •             Politics of slight IE - Sat, Jul 24
    • The omens for the monsoon session of Parliament are clear. On Friday, senior BJP leaders pleaded their inability to keep a luncheon appointment with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, citing the CBI summons to Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah.
    •        
    •             The arithmetic of dal, atta and rice IE - Sat, Jul 24
    • During the last six months, much debate has focused on the "price rise" in agricultural commodities, especially in the price of food.
    •        
    •             Unveiling the truth IE - Sat, Jul 24
    • It would not be entirely correct to assume that the animated discussion these days on the subject of the burqa necessarily reflects a concern for the rights of Muslim women.
    •        
    •             Printline pakistan IE - Sat, Jul 24
    • Hillary comes visiting
    • US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Pakistan this week. The News reported on July 18: "Clinton called for 'additional steps' from Pakistan against terrorism... Should an attack against the US be traced to Pakistan, it would have a very devastating impact on our relationship,' she added.
    •        
    •             The dream lives IE - Sat, Jul 24
    • It started as a dare. When MIT Media Lab visionary Nicholas Negroponte promised to bring affordable computing to children in developing countries with the One Laptop Per Child project, India's HRD ministry rejected the idea. We didn't need the largesse, because we had the smarts and economies of scale to make a $10 laptop, it claimed.
    •        
    •             Keeping up the acts IE - Sat, Jul 24
    • The monsoon session of Parliament will be held from July 26 to August 27. The UPA government has not been able to meet its legislative targets in the last couple of sessions.
    •        
    •             Duping Uncle Sam IE - Sat, Jul 24
    • In the three Indo-Pak wars, the only beneficiary from the American perspective is their military-industrial complex.
    •        
    •             FE Editorial : Sound banking FE - Sat, Jul 24
    • Banks are posting robust results in the quarter ended June this year, largely on the back of strong credit growth, led in particular by the telecom sector.
    •        
    •             Behind the curve? FE - Sat, Jul 24
    • Reserve Bank of India's credit policy is due later this month. The latest data for industrial production and prices released in July will make RBI's policy dilemma worse. Industrial production declined in May while core inflation rose sharply.
    •        

           
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    Rural markets

    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Jump to: navigation, search

    Rural Markets are defined as those segments of overall market of any economy, which are distinct from the other types of markets like stock market, commodity markets or Labor economics. Rural Markets constitute an important segment of overall economy, for example, in the USA, out of about 3000 countries, around 2000 counties are rural, that is, non-urbanized, with population of 55 million. Typically, a rural market will represent a community in a rural area with a population of 2500 to 30000[1].

    [edit] Significance

    In recent years, rural markets have acquired significance in countries like China and India, as the overall growth of the economy has resulted into substantial increase in the purchasing power of the rural communities. On account of the green revolution in India, the rural areas are consuming a large quantity of industrial and urban manufactured products. In this context, a special marketing strategy, namely, rural marketing has taken shape. Sometimes, rural marketing is confused with agricultural marketing – the later denotes marketing of produce of the rural areas to the urban consumers or industrial consumers, whereas rural marketing involves delivering manufactured or processed inputs or services to rural producers or consumers. Also, when we consider the scenario of India and China, there is a picture that comes out,huge market for the developed products as well as the labor support. This has led to the change in the mindset of the marketers to move to these parts of the world.

    Also rural market is getting an importance because of the saturation of the urban market. As due to the competition in the urban market, the market is more or so saturated as most of the capacity of the purchasers have been targeted by the marketers.So the marketers are looking for extending their product categories to an unexplored market i.e. the rural market. This has also led to the CSR activities being done by the corporate to help the poor people attain some wealth to spend on their product categories. Here we can think of HLL (now, HUL) initiatives in the rural India. One of such project is the Project Shakti, which is not only helping their company attain some revenue but also helping the poor women of the village to attain some money which is surely going to increase their purchasing power. Also this will increase their brand loyalty as well as recognition in that area. Similarly we can think of the ITC E-Chaupal, which is helping the poor farmers get all the information about the weather as well as the market price of the food grains they are producing.In other view these activities are also helping the companies increase their brand value. So as it is given above the significance of the rural market has increased due to the saturation of the urban market as well as in such conditions the company which will lead the way will be benefited as shown by the success of HUL and ITC initiatives.

    [edit] Strategies

    Dynamics of rural markets differ from other market types, and similarly rural marketing strategies are also significantly different from the marketing strategies aimed at an urban or industrial consumer. This, along with several other related issues, have been subject matter of intense discussions and debate in countries like India and China and focus of even international symposia organized in these countries[2].

    Rural markets and rural marketing involve a number of strategies, which include:

  • Client and location specific promotion
  • Joint or cooperative promotion..
  • Bundling of inputs
  • Management of demand
  • Developmental marketing
  • Unique selling proposition (USP)
  • Extension services
  • Business ethics
  • Partnership for sustainability

Client and Location specific promotion involves a strategy designed to be suitable to the location and the client.

Joint or co-operative promotion strategy involves participation between the marketing agencies and the client.

'Bundling of inputs' denote a marketing strategy, in which several related items are sold to the target client, including arrangements of credit, after-sale service, and so on.

Management of demand involve continuous market research of buyer's needs and problems at various levels so that continuous improvements and innovations can be undertaken for a sustainable market performance.

Developmental marketing refer to taking up marketing programmes keeping the development objective in mind and using various managerial and other inputs of marketing to achieve these objectives.

Media, both traditional as well as the modern media, is used as a marketing strategy.

Unique Selling Propositions (USP) involve presenting a theme with the product to attract the client to buy that particular product. For examples, some of famous Indian Farm equipment manufactures have coined catchy themes, which they display along with the products, to attract the target client, that is the farmers. English version of some of such themes would read like:

  • The heartbeats of rural India
  • With new technique for a life time of company
  • For the sake of progress and prosperity

Extension Services denote, in short, a system of attending to the missing links and providing the required know-how.

Ethics in Business. form, as usual, an important plank for rural markets and rural marketing.

Partnership for sustainability involve laying and building a foundation for continuous and long lasting relationship.

'''Building sustainable market linkages for rural products: Industry's role, scope, opportunities and challenges'''

Introduction: Rural products of India are unique, innovative and have good utility and values. Large number of these rural products (like handicraft items, food products, embroidery, clothes & other products) sustains a significant segment of the population in the rural areas. Several attributes of rural products can be identified, for which, it has a demand in the market. Out of the lots, 'ethnic origin' and 'indigenous design & appearance' are two traits of rural products, attracting a premium in the market. But, contrary to this, the non-uniformity of rural products (from one another) and lack of its quality control measures has been creating a negative demand. Besides, the small sized and dispersed production units of these rural products hinder realization of the economies of scale in marketing and result in high transaction costs per unit of output. Niche-based products have no local market. Products in local use are also not marketed horizontally; they often first travel down to market through a long chain of intermediaries and then up to more difficult locations in the rural areas. In the process, the people in rural areas suffer from both low prices as producers and high prices as consumers. In this conflict, rural products loss its equilibrium and the supply side becomes exponentially high. Because of this hazard, rural entrepreneurs face acute economic loss and rural markets become stagnant. Therefore, there is an emergent need for Building sustainable market linkages for rural products, so that, it can be connected to larger markets and farmers can get a sustainable livelihood.

Market linkages for rural products: There are, broadly speaking, three ways in which they can be connected to the markets. They can do it on their own — through cooperatives. Or, the state can do it for them — through its procurement engines. Stages one and two, in a manner of speaking. Today, developmental thinking on market linkages has reached stage three — linkages through companies or industries. Rural markets are regarded as organizations for marketing of non-farm products in a traditional setting. Developing rural markets is one of the major concerns of government and Non-governmental organization in India. This subject has attracted large number of research studies over past. Among which noted contributions are made by Rajagopal, PhD, FRSA; faculty members of Institute of Rural Management Anand, IIMA and others.

Across India, previous attempts to create such linkages have floundered. Take Assam and other eastern states itself. Around the Eighties, the state government here decided that cooperatives were a great way to consolidate its political base. Loans went to the undeserving. Debts were written off. The institutions slowly got corrupted. As for the linkages provided by the state, these offer uncertain sustainability. Given this context, one can conclude that profit-oriented industry linkages are a more sustainable, more scalable alternative. In this scenario, companies can use the social infrastructure (the self help group et al.) as an alternative procurement and distribution chain and vise versa.

Industry's role in building market linkages: To make an effective market linkage, industries have to play as an engine of market, which can generate a brand image of the rural products. This initiative of industries will also strengthen the backward and forward linkages of the rural market, besides, accelerating the innovations of the rural products. Definitely, this strategy will also give a remarkable dividend to the industries & profit making companies. In micro level, it is observed that to create a sustainable market linkage for rural products, industries can develop an ecosystem of Self Help Groups (SHGs) by involving the local communities through village level empowerment. It is nothing less than the next phase in the democratization of commerce. Under this paradigm, industries can create a network with viable marketing channels covering all the linkages from villages to the global level. This architecture provides the right value of procurement through the village procurement centres and rural entrepreneurs can sell their products faster with better price realization. This model is also capable of generating a consumer business and an output business in a win-win scenario, where rural producers can get a wide marketing horizon and the industries shall get a new, lower cost 'salesforce'. Another role of industries in building market linkages for agro-based rural products can be the 'dynamic contract farming'. If a conventional industry can kick off a contract farming business, and export niche horticulture crops like cucumbers, the small and marginal farmers who could grow these small cucumbers would make Rs 30,000 in profits in a year. KRBL, one of India's largest basmati exporters, has contract farming agreements with 24,000 farmers; Global Green buys from about 12,000 farmers. Moreover, in the current era of information technology, industry and private companies can also creatively use ICT for building sustainable marketing linkages. This approach creatively leverages information technology (IT) to set up a meta-market in favour of small and poor producers/rural entrepreneurs, who would otherwise continue to operate and transact in 'unevolved' markets where the rent-seeking vested interests exploit their disadvantaged position. ITC e Choupal is the best example in this context. Through creative use of Information Technology, ITC eChoupal has been creating sustainable stakeholder value by reorganizing the agri-commodity supply chains simultaneously improving the competitiveness of small farmer agriculture and enhancing rural prosperity. eChoupal also sidesteps the value-sapping problems caused by fragmentation, dispersion, heterogeneity and weak infrastructure. ITC takes on the role of a Network Orchestrator in this meta-market by stitching together an end-to-end solution. It eliminated the traditional 'mandi' system which involved lot of middlemen as a result of which farmers failed to get the right value for their produce. The solution simultaneously addresses the viability concerns of the participating companies by virtually aggregating the demand from thousands of small farmers, and the value-for-money concerns of the farmers by creating competition among the companies in each leg of the value chain.

Scope & opportunities: The basic scope of this novel initiative will be the mutual benefits of the rural entrepreneurs and industries. The entrepreneurs – primary beneficiaries, SHGs – bridge with the community, participating companies/industries and rural consumers have befitted through a robust commercial relationship. These models of marketing linkages demonstrate a large corporation which can play a major role in reorganizing markets and increasing the efficiency of a rural product generation system. While doing so it will benefit farmers and rural communities as well as shareholders. Moreover, the key role of information technology—provided and maintained by the industry/company for building linkages, and used by local farmers—brings about transparency, increased access to information, and rural transformation. Besides, this strategy of market linkage, addresses the challenges faced by rural entrepreneurs due to institution voids, numerous intermediaries and infrastructure bottlenecks. Moreover, the prime scope of this model is the creation of opportunities for the rural entrepreneurs for product differentiation and innovation by offering them choices. Because of this sustainable market linkages, rural producers can participate in the benefits of globalization and will also develop their capacity to maintain global quality standard. Nonetheless, it creates new stakeholders for the industry sector. And subsequently, they become part of the firms' core businesses. The involvement of the private /industry sector at the rural product and market development can also provide opportunities for the development of new services and values to the customers, which will find application in the developed markets. It will be worth mentioning that building a sustainable market linkage through industry's intervention will also empower the rural mass (producers, farmers & entrepreneurs) to cope with socio-economic problems in the rural society and will ensure economic self –reliance.

Challenges: There are significant challenges to the entire process the most important being the capacity building of the rural entrepreneurs. For decades, the entrepreneurs associated with very conventional/traditional knowledge of business, humiliation with government, so they are likely to look at these initiatives with skepticism. Only consistent performance can convince the skeptics. Therefore, the industries must play a catalytic role to cope with this challenge and should also train the entrepreneurs to develop their managerial and IT skills. On the other hand, the products of the existing and popular brand also stand as threat to the rural products. These global giants (brand) may try to suppress the rural products in the markets with its communication hype. Therefore, developing alternative and additional market linkages for these products is an absolute necessity. Moreover, the low volumes of rural products, high operating costs, high attrition, and absence of local know how and relationships may also create problem in the process. Henceforth, it is essential to make a way out to cope with these odds.

Conclusion: These issues gain added complexity under globalization, where markets are characterized by extreme competition and volatility. While rural products has been perceived traditionally as catering to the local market, or at best, to a wider national market through limited formal channels, the reality of globalization since the 1990s introduced a new dimension to the market for such products. The issue of rural product generation through industrialization, therefore, needs to be viewed from a new angle and on far more scientific lines. The core of a scientific approach is to understand the market opportunities for rural products along with the country's development priorities and to chalk out a strategy where rural industries have an important role to play. While rural products are forced to increasingly become part of global supply chains, these products need to adapt themselves, not only according to the changing tastes of the national market, but also according to changes in tastes in the international market. Therefore, a process is essential to explore the market linkages and capacity building for SHGs through a bottom up approach and continuous dialogue with stakeholders of rural enterprise. This process should ensure the participation of rural people as consumers and producers in the globalization mechanism, with better livelihoods and global access to markets. The real challenge of building a sustainable market linkage starts here.

[edit] Present position

Rural markets, as part of any economy, have untapped potential. There are several difficulties confronting the effort to fully explore rural markets. The concept of rural markets in India, as also in several other countries, like China[3], is still in evolving shape, and the sector poses a variety of challenges, including understanding the dynamics of the rural markets and strategies to supply and satisfy the rural consumers.

  • Sukhpal Singh- Rural Marketing Management
  • A Developmental approach from Vikalpa(July-September 1985), a journal in English, published by IIMA
  • K. L. K. Rao and Ramesh Tagat: Rural Marketing - a developmental approach
  •     
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    British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: The Dynamics of Indian Modernization, 1773-1835
    by David Kopf
    Pages: 326
    Contributors: David Kopf
    Place of Publication: Berkeley, CA
    Publication Year: 1969
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  • Page < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 >

    Anglicists versus Orientalists

    The contribution of British Orientalists in the second half of the 18th century to the growth of self-awareness and pride in their past cultural achievements among educated Hindus is well known. As David Kopf, author of British Orientalism and Bengal Renaissance: The Dynamics of Indian Modernization 1773-1835, has put it: " The intellectual elite that clustered about Hastings after 1770 was classicist rather than 'progressive' in their historical outlook, cosmopolitan rather than nationalist in their view of other cultures, and rationalist rather than romantic in their quest for those 'constant and universal principles' that express the unity of human nature."

     Much of this was to change for the worse in the 19th century when nationalism and racism came to dominate the West European mind. The earliest expression of this change in our case is James Mill's History of India published in 1817. It was, in large part, written to refute the views of Sir William Jones. Though Mill spoke no Indian languages, indeed had never been to India, his damning indictment of Indian society and religion had become the standard work - required reading for all who would serve in India. It marked the triumph of the Anglicists (read detractors of India) over the Orientalists who were admirers of Indian civilization.

    Thomas Babbington Macaulay (1800-59) is best known for introducing English education in India. Macaulay was the first Law Member of the Governor-General's Legislature. He clinched the issue in favor of the Anglicists with his famous minute of 1832. English was to become the medium of instruction and not Sanskrit or Persian which the Orientalists had favored. In the House of Commons, Macaulay directed his attack towards Hinduism:

     "In no part of the world has a religion ever existed more unfavorable to the moral and intellectual health of our race." 

    (source: India Discovered -
    By John Keay   77-78).

    He wrote in his notorious 1835 Minute that Hinduism was based on " a literature admitted to be of small intrinsic value ...(one) that inculcates the most serious errors on the most important subjects ... hardly reconcilable with reason, with morality...fruitful of monstrous superstitions. " Hindus had therefore been fed for millennia with a "false history, false astronomy, false medicine ...in company of a false religion." 

    "A war of Bengalees against English men was like a war of sheep against wolves, of men against demons."

    Dismissing with incredible arrogance the profound speculation and beautiful language of the Sanskrit classics, he said, " I doubt whether the Sanskrit literature be as valuable as that of our Saxon and Norman progenitors." 

    (source: India: A World in Transition - By Beatrice Pitney Lamb  p. 194)). Refer to chapter on First Indologists.

    Oriental Renaissance began to invite opposition. Missionaries were one obvious source of it. Another source was Imperialism. European powers were becoming self-conscious imperialists and they could not rule with a clean conscience over people who were proud possessors of great cultures. Another source, a natural result of Imperialism, was growing Eurocentricity. Europe became less and less inclined to believe that anything worthwhile could be found anywhere outside of Europe . 

    Therefore, the Oriental Movement began to be downgraded. It was called "romantic" and even "fanatic"; its fascination for India was a form of "Indo-mania".  

    Indians were allowed to possess the Vedas, the oldest literature of the Aryans, but the Aryans themselves were made to migrate, this time from Europe to India as conquerors. Thus the tables were turned. Migration remained but its direction changed. India which was hitherto regarded as the home of European languages and people now became the happy hunting ground of the same people who came and conquered and imposed their will and culture on India. 

    The theory of Aryan invasion was born.  

    (source: On Hinduism Reviews and Reflections  - By Ram Swarup  p. 107 - 108). Refer to chapter on First IndologistsWatch Scientific verification of Vedic knowledge

    In the 1830's, Macaulay had poured scorn on Asian cultures: "A single shelf of a good European library he held to be worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia..."  

    Ever since the days of Macaulay's reform in the 1830's, all higher education in India had been conducted in English. Anglomania became the fashion among the social and intellectual elite, whose derision of their own Indian culture was a token of their Europeanization.  It produced a generation of young Indians who found themselves rootless, out of touch with their own country and its enduring culture..."

    It had been Macaulay's aim to train a large class of men who would be: "Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect," who would stand between the British and the illiterate masses.."

    (source: The Soul of India - By Amaury de Riencourt   p. 288 - 292).

    In this new Anglicist discourse, India was misunderstood, misrepresented and run down in almost every conceivable way. This shameful history of the imperialist and hegemonic discourse and perversion in the name of knowledge made it out that Hindu society had got frozen just above the primitive level. This distortion produced alienation in the Hindus, if anything, has grown since independence. 

    (source: The Hindu Phenomenon -
    By Girilal Jain p. 38-40. Jain, was doyen of Indian journalists and editor of The Times of India from 1978-1988). Refer to chapter on First Indologists. For more information refer to chapter on First Indologists. Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth. Watch An Invasion through Conversion - youtube.com

    ***

    No Ten Commandments east of the Suez Canal?

    Sahibs of British India

    Swami Vivekananda explained the effects of British education in these words:

    "Oh, India, this is your terrible danger. The spell of imitating the West getting such a hold upon you, that what is good or what is bad, is no longer decided by reason, judgment, discrimination or reference to the Sastras.

    'Whatever ideas, whatever manners the white men praise or like, are good; whatever things they dislike or censure, are bad! Alas! What can be a more tangible proof of foolishness than this?"

    ***

    Edmond Taylor writes: "In the golden age of empire, both in official propaganda and in their private mythologies of the white man's burden, the sahibs placed the main emphasis upon their own superiority rather than the natives inferiority. 

    "The sahib is accustomed to being obeyed, to being feared, to being surrounded with deference and servility. He belongs to the British middle-class himself but in the East his life is filled with the symbols of domination and grandeur. He may not be enjoying fantastic luxury but deference is a more deeply rooted symbol of power than luxury, and on the scale of deference, as far as his relations with the natives go, he lives like a pre-revolutionary grand duke of Russia." 

    "The British have set themselves up as the master race in India. British rule in India is fascism, there is no dodging that."

    (source: Richer By Asia - Edmond Taylor p. 105 and 248).

     

     

    Civilizing the Heathens? An Englishman getting a pedicure from his Indian servants.

    The Tyranny of British Rule: "The British have set themselves up as the master race in India. British rule in India is fascism, there is no dodging that." 

    "It is in India, of all places on the earth, that the superiority of the white over the colored races is most strikingly demonstrated."

    "According to British history, there was no freedom movement in India, no man made famines, no transfer of huge resources from India to Britain , no destruction of Indian industries and agriculture by the British rule, but only a very benign and benevolent British rule in India ."

    Refer to Loot: in search of the East India Company - By Nick Robins and How India became poor - indiarealist.com

    ***

    A German professor, George Wegener, expressed the heart of the matter as far back as 1911:

    "It is in India, of all places on the earth, that the superiority of the white over the colored races is most strikingly demonstrated. If the Asiatics were to succeed in destroying English mastery there, then the position of the whole white race throughout the world would be fatally undermined."

    (source: The Case for India - By Will Durant  Simon and Schuster, New York. 1930 p. 178).

    The Hindi word loot entered English lexicon after the Battle of Plassey. English historian William Digby estimated in 1901 that the amount looted from India was 1 billion dollars.

    "If British empire-builders could have kept racialism out of their policy, I'm sure they could happily have stayed on in India to this day.
    That racial discrimination was absolutely blatant as and when Indian fighting forces came in contact with the British fighting forces. If an Indian had any kind of self-respect, he couldn't help resenting it. Even today, after so many years, I hesitate to go to any white man's country. During that impressionable period of my life, the treatment I got from Britishers, from white people, was so bad that even today I fear I might meet the same thing."  - B.C. Dutt (ex-rating the Royal Indian Navy and a leader of the Mutiny of 1946).

    (source:
    Indian Tales of the Raj - By Zareer Masani p.120).

     

    A painting by an Indian artist showing a British child accompanied by three Indian servants, enjoying a horseback ride in Calcutta gardens in 1840s.

    ***

    A handbook published in 1878 recommended twenty-seven servants for a well-to-do British family in Calcutta and fourteen for a bachelor.

    (source: Colonial Overlords: Time Frame Ad 1850-1900 - Time-Life Books. The Scramble for Africa ASIN 0809464667 p. 8-27).

    ***

    A Nation of Shopkeepers wants to rule India

    Sir Josiah Child, appointed chairman of the East India company, had once declared, " the time was ripe to lay the foundation of a large, well-grounded, sure English dominion in India for all time to come."

    (source: Colonial Overlords: Time Frame Ad 1850-1900  - Time-Life Books. The Scramble for Africa ASIN 0809464667 p. 13).

    Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Home Minister in the Baldwin Government, expressed : "I know it is said in the missionary meetings that we conquered India to raise the level of the Indians. That is cant. We conquered India as an outlet for the goods of Great Britain. We conquered India by the sword, and by the sword we shall hold it."

    (source: The Case for India - By Will Durant Simon and Schuster, New York. 1930 p.163-164 and India in Bondage: Her Right to Freedom  - By Jabez T. Sunderland p.138).

    As the 19th century progressed, British power and population increased: The Moghal empire shrank to an impotent enclave around Delhi; and independent princes, one by one, became British clients. Indian participation in government was reduced to a minimum; social intercourse was limited and distant. The British began to see- and treat-all Indians as an inferior and conquered people, and to make maintenance of British power and aloofness a policy. The spread of the evangelical movement, with its horror of the non-Christian, only added to Britons' concept of their inherent superiority.

    (source: What Life Was Like in the Jewel of the Crown: British India AD 1600-1905 - By The Editors of Time-Life Books. p. 93).

    According to Indian Labor Journal, "For the same amount of work a white man got three times the salary as an Indian would get." 

    (source: Indian Labor Journal, was founded during the peak of Freedom Movement, a weekly tabloid that stopped publication on the eve of Independence in 1947. Its founder-editor, the late G V Rahgavan managed to rattle the British with his telling commentaries in the column Epistles Brief and Frank. Raghavan, who was initiated into politics by C Rajagopalachari, was one of the famous socialist leaders and freedom fighters of the region. Closely associated with Mahatma Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jay Prakash Narayan and V V Giri, he served in the Bengal Nagpur Railways for three decades and initiated many welfare measures for the employees.  

    (source: http://www.expressindia.com/ie/daily/19970812/22450223.html)

    Birds of Passage and of Prey

    The British who go to India to carry on the government never for a moment think of the country as home; it is merely their temporary tarrying place, their "inn". Edmund Burke described these British countrymen of his by the striking phrase, "birds of passage and prey." The British in India are no part of India; they do not settle down to make homes there; they make their 'piles' and return to their country, where all who have been in government service continue all the rest of their lives to draw  fat pensions from India.

    (source: India in Bondage: Her Right to Freedom  - By Jabez T. Sunderland p. 299).

    Speech in House of Commons on India, 1783 - By Edmund Burke:

    Despite the act if 1773, there were still concerns about the administration of India.

    " ... Our conquest there, after twenty years, is as crude as it was the first day. The natives scarcely know what it is to see the grey head
    of an Englishman. Young men (boys almost) govern there, without society, and without sympathy with the natives. They have no more
    social habits with the people, than if they still resided in England; nor, indeed, any species of intercourse but that which is necessary to making a sudden fortune, with a view to a remote settlement.. Animated with all the avarice of age, and all the impetuosity of youth, they roll in one after another; wave after wave; and there is nothing before the eyes of the natives but an endless, hopeless prospect of new flights of birds of prey and passage, with appetites continually renewing for a food that is continually wasting. Every rupee of profit made by an Englishman is lost for ever to India."

    (source: Internet Modern History Sourcebook).

     

     

              

    Page < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 >

     

    William Jones (philologist)

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    Sir William Jones

    Sir William Jones (28 September 1746 – 27 April 1794) was an English philologist and scholar of ancient India, particularly known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among Indo-European languages. He was also the founder of the Asiatic Society.

    Contents

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    [edit] Biography

    Jones was born in London at Beaufort Buildings, Westminster; his father (also named William Jones) was a mathematician from Anglesey in north Wales, noted for devising the use of the symbol pi. The young William Jones was a linguistic prodigy, learning Greek, Latin, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew and the basics of Chinese writing at an early age.[1] By the end of his life he knew thirteen languages thoroughly and another twenty-eight reasonably well, making him a hyperpolyglot.

    Though his father died when he was only three, Jones was still able to go to Harrow in September 1753 and on to Oxford University. He graduated from University College, Oxford in 1768 and became M.A. in 1773. Too poor, even with his award, to pay the fees, he gained a job tutoring the seven-year-old Lord Althorp, son of Earl Spencer and as such an ancestor of Princess Diana. He embarked on a career as a tutor and translator for the next six years. During this time he published Histoire de Nader Chah (1770), a French translation of a work originally written in Persian by Mirza Mehdi Khan Astarabadi. This was done at the request of King Christian VII of Denmark who had visited Jones - who by the age of 24 had already acquired a reputation as an orientalist. This would be the first of numerous works on Persia, Turkey, and the Middle East in general.

    Tomb of William Jones in Kolkata.

    In 1770, he joined the Middle Temple and studied law for three years, which would eventually lead him to his life-work in India; after a spell as a circuit judge in Wales, and a fruitless attempt to resolve the issues of the American Revolution in concert with Benjamin Franklin in Paris, he was appointed puisne judge to the Supreme Court of Bengal in March 1783. In April 1783 he married Anna Maria Shipley, the eldest daughter of Dr. Jonathan Shipley, Bishop of Landaff and Bishop of St Asaph. On 25 September 1783 he arrived in Calcutta.

    In the Subcontinent he was entranced by Indian culture, an as-yet untouched field in European scholarship, and on 15 January 1784 he founded the Asiatic Society in Calcutta. Over the next ten years he would produce a flood of works on India, launching the modern study of the subcontinent in virtually every social science. He also wrote on the local laws, music, literature, botany, and geography, and made the first English translations of several important works of Indian literature. He died in Calcutta on 27 April 1794 at the age of 47.

    [edit] Scholarly contributions

    Of all his discoveries, Jones is best known today for making and propagating the observation that Sanskrit bore a certain resemblance to classical Greek and Latin. In The Sanscrit Language (1786) he suggested that all three languages had a common root, and that indeed they may all be further related, in turn, to Gothic and the Celtic languages, as well as to Persian.

    His third annual discourse before the Asiatic Society on the history and culture of the Hindus (delivered on 2 February 1786 and published in 1788) with the famed "philologer" passage is often cited as the beginning of comparative linguistics and Indo-European studies. This is Jones' most quoted passage, establishing his tremendous find in the history of linguistics:

    The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.

    This common source came to be known as Proto-Indo-European.

    As early as the mid-17th century Dutchman Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn (1612–1653) and others had been aware that Ancient Persian belonged to the same language group as the European languages. Similarly, American colonist Jonathan Edwards Jr. published in 1787 a work where he demonstrated that the Algonquian languages across northeastern North America were related to each other, and so were the Iroquoian languages. Nevertheless, it was Jones' discovery that caught the imagination of later scholars and became the semi-mythical origin of modern historical and comparative linguistics.

    In 1789 he was the first to translate the Abhijñānaśākuntalam, an Indian play (written in a mix of Sanskrit and Prakrit) into a Western language under the title of Sacontalá or The Fatal Ring; An Indian Drama by Cálidás (Kalidasa). He encouraged his colleague Charles Wilkins to make the first translation of the Bhagavad Gita into English.

    Jones is also indirectly responsible for some of the sensibility of the poetry of the English Romantic movement (particularly that of Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge), as his translations of "eastern" poetical works were a source for that style.

    [edit] Latin chess poem

    An early illustration of Jones' Caissa

    In 1763, at the age of 17, Jones wrote the poem Caissa in Latin hexameters, based on a 658-line poem called "Scacchia, Ludus" published in 1527 by Marco Girolamo Vida, giving a mythical origin of chess that has become well known in the chess world. He also published an English language version of the poem.

    In the poem the nymph Caissa initially repels the advances of Mars, the god of war. Spurned, Mars seeks the aid of the god of sport, who creates the game of chess as a gift for Mars to win Caissa's favour. Mars wins her over with the game.

    Caissa has been since been characterised as the "goddess" of chess, her name being used in several contexts in modern chess playing.

    [edit] Schopenhauer's citation

    On page two of his main work of 1819, Schopenhauer referred to one of Sir William Jones's publications. Schopenhauer was trying to support the doctrine that "everything that exists for knowledge, and hence the whole of this world, is only object in relation to the subject, perception of the perceiver, in a word, representation."[2] He quoted Sir William Jones's original English:

    …how early this basic truth was recognized by the sages of India, since it appears as the fundamental tenet of the Vedânta philosophy ascribed to Vyasa, is proved by Sir William Jones in the last of his essays: "On the Philosophy of the Asiatics" (Asiatic Researches, vol. IV, p. 164): "The fundamental tenet of the Vedânta school consisted not in denying the existence of matter, that is solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending that it has no essence independent of mental perception; that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms."

    Schopenhauer used Jones's authority to relate the basic principle of his philosophy to what was, according to Jones, the most important underlying proposition of Vedânta. He referred to Sir William Jones's writings in a few other places in his works, but this was the most extensive citation.

    [edit] References

    1. ^ Edward Said, Orientalism New York: Random House, page 77.
    2. ^ The World as Will and Representation, § 1

    [edit] Resources

    [edit] External links


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  • Max Müller

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    Max Müller as a young man

    Friedrich Max Müller (December 6, 1823 – October 28, 1900), more regularly known as Max Müller, was a German philologist and Orientalist, one of the founders of the western academic field of Indian studies and the discipline of comparative religion. Müller wrote both scholarly and popular works on the subject of Indology, a discipline he introduced to the British reading public, and the Sacred Books of the East, a massive, 50-volume set of English translations prepared under his direction, stands as an enduring monument to Victorian scholarship.

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    [edit] Life and work

    He was born in Dessau, the son of the Romantic poet Wilhelm Müller, whose verse Franz Schubert had set to music in his song-cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. Max Müller's mother, Adelheide Müller, was the eldest daughter of a chief minister of Anhalt-Dessau. Müller knew Felix Mendelssohn and had Carl Maria von Weber as a godfather.

    In 1841 he entered Leipzig University, where he left his early interest in music and poetry in favour of philosophy. Müller received his Ph.D. in 1843 for a dissertation on Spinoza's Ethics.[1] He also displayed an aptitude for languages, learning the Classical languages Greek and Latin, as well as Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit. In 1844 Müller went to Berlin to study with Friedrich Schelling. He began to translate the Upanishads for Schelling, and continued to research Sanskrit under Franz Bopp, the first systematic scholar of the Indo-European languages. Schelling led Müller to relate the history of language to the history of religion. At this time, Müller published his first book, a German translation of the Hitopadesa, a collection of Indian fables.

    In 1845, Müller moved to Paris to study Sanskrit under Eugène Burnouf. It was Burnouf who encouraged him to publish the complete Rig Veda in Sanskrit, using manuscripts available in England.

    Müller moved to England in 1846 in order to study Sanskrit texts in the collection of the East India Company. He supported himself at first with creative writing, his novel German Love being popular in its day. Müller's connections with the East India Company and with Sanskritists based at Oxford University led to a career in Britain, where he eventually became the leading intellectual commentator on the culture of India, which Britain controlled as part of its Empire. This led to complex exchanges between Indian and British intellectual culture, especially through Müller's links with the Brahmo Samaj. He became a member of Christ Church, Oxford in 1851, when he gave his first series of lectures on comparative philology. He gained appointments as Taylorian Professor of Modern European Languages in 1854. Defeated in the 1860 competition for the tenured Chair of Sanskrit, he later became Oxford's first Professor of Comparative Theology (1868 – 1875), at All Souls College.

    Müller attempted to formulate a philosophy of religion that addressed the crisis of faith engendered by the historical and critical study of religion by German scholars on the one hand, and by the Darwinian revolution on the other. Müller was wary of Darwin's work on human evolution, and attacked his view of the development of human faculties. His work was taken up by cultural commentators such as his friend John Ruskin, who saw it as a productive response to the crisis of the age (compare Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach"). He analyzed mythologies as rationalizations of natural phenomena, primitive beginnings that we might denominate "protoscience" within a cultural evolution; Müller's "anti-Darwinian" concepts of the evolution of human cultures are among his least lasting achievements.

    Müller circa 1898.

    Müller shared many of the ideas associated with Romanticism, which coloured his account of ancient religions, in particular his emphasis on the formative influence on early religion of emotional communion with natural forces.

    Müller's Sanskrit studies came at a time when scholars had started to see language development in relation to cultural development. The recent discovery of the Indo-European (IE) language group had started to lead to much speculation about the relationship between Greco-Roman cultures and those of more ancient peoples. In particular the Vedic culture of India was thought to have been the ancestor of European Classical cultures, and scholars sought to compare the genetically related European and Asian languages in order to reconstruct the earliest form of the root-language. The Vedic language, Sanskrit, was thought to be the oldest of the IE languages. Müller therefore devoted himself to the study of this language, becoming one of the major Sanskrit scholars of his day. Müller believed that the earliest documents of Vedic culture should be studied in order to provide the key to the development of pagan European religions, and of religious belief in general. To this end, Müller sought to understand the most ancient of Vedic scriptures, the Rig-Veda.[2]

    Müller was greatly impressed by Ramakrishna Paramhansa, his contemporary and proponent of Vedantic philosophy, and authored several essays and books on him.[3].

    A 1907 study of Müller's inaugural Hibbert Lecture of 1878 was made by one of his contemporaries, D. Menant.[4] It argued that a crucial role was played by Müller and social reformer Behramji Malabari in initiating debate on child marriage and widow remarriage questions in India.

    For Müller, the study of the language had to relate to the study of the culture in which it had been used. He came to the view that the development of languages should be tied to that of belief-systems. At that time the Vedic scriptures were little-known in the West, though there was increasing interest in the philosophy of the Upanishads. Müller believed that the sophisticated Upanishadic philosophy could be linked to the primitive henotheism of early Vedic Brahmanism from which it evolved. He had to travel to London in order to look at documents held in the collection of the British East India Company. While there he persuaded the company to allow him to undertake a critical edition of the Rig-Veda, a task he pursued doggedly over many years (1849–1874), and which resulted in the critical edition for which he is most remembered.

    For Müller, the culture of the Vedic peoples represented a form of nature worship, an idea clearly influenced by Romanticism. He saw the gods of the Rig-Veda as active forces of nature, only partly personified as imagined supernatural persons. From this claim Müller derived his theory that mythology is 'a disease of language'. By this he meant that myth transforms concepts into beings and stories. In Müller's view 'gods' began as words constructed in order to express abstract ideas, but were transformed into imagined personalities. Thus the Indo-European father-god appears under various names: Zeus, Jupiter, Dyaus Pita. For Müller all these names can be traced to the word 'Dyaus', which he understands to imply 'shining' or 'radiance'. This leads to the terms 'deva', 'deus', 'theos' as generic terms for a god, and to the names 'Zeus' and 'Jupiter' (derived from deus-pater). In this way a metaphor becomes personified and ossified. This aspect of Müller's thinking closely resembled the later ideas of Nietzsche.

    Nevertheless Müller's work contributed to the developing interest in Aryan culture which set Indo-European ('Aryan') traditions in opposition to Semitic religions. He was deeply saddened by the fact that these later came to be expressed in racist terms. This was far from Müller's own intention. For Müller the discovery of common Indian and European ancestry was a powerful argument against racism, arguing that "an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar" and that "the blackest Hindus represent an earlier stage of Aryan speech and thought than the fairest Scandinavians".[5]

    In 1881, he published a translation of the first edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. He agreed with Schopenhauer that this edition was the most direct and honest expression of Kant's thought. His translation corrected several errors that were committed by previous translators. In his Translator's Preface, Müller wrote, "The bridge of thoughts and sighs that spans the whole history of the Aryan world has its first arch in the Veda, its last in Kant's Critique.…While in the Veda we may study the childhood, we may study in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason the perfect manhood of the Aryan mind.…The materials are now accessible, and the English-speaking race, the race of the future, will have in Kant's Critique another Aryan heirloom, as precious as the Veda — a work that may be criticised, but can never be ignored."

    He was also influenced by the work Thought and Reality, of the Russian philosopher African Spir[6]

    His wife, Georgina Adelaide (died 1916) had his papers and correspondence carefully bound; they are at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.[7] The Goethe Institutes in India are named Max Müller Bhavan in his honour.[8] Müller's son Wilhelm Max Müller was also an important scholar.

    [edit] Reception

    Portrait of the elderly Max Müller by George Frederic Watts, 1894-1895

    Müller's comparative religion was criticized as subversive of the Christian faith. According to Monsignor Munro, the Roman Catholic bishop of St Andrew's Cathedral in Glasgow, his 1888 Gifford Lectures on the "science of religion" represented nothing less than "a crusade against divine revelation, against Jesus Christ and Christianity".[9] Similar accusations had already led to Müller's exclusion from the Boden chair in Sanskrit in favour of the conservative Monier Monier-Williams. By the 1880s Müller was being courted by Charles Godfrey Leland, Helena Blavatsky and other writers who were seeking to assert the merits of "Pagan" religious traditions over Christianity. The designer Mary Fraser Tytler stated that Müller's book Chips from a German Workshop (a collection of his essays) was her "Bible", which helped her to create a multi-cultural sacred imagery.

    Müller distanced himself from these developments, and remained within the Lutheran faith in which he had been brought up. He several times expressed the view that a "reformation" within Hinduism needed to occur comparable to the Christian Reformation.[10] In his view, "if there is one thing which a comparative study of religions places in the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion is exposed... Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first beginnings, we find it free from many blemishes that affected it in its later states". He used his links with the Brahmo Samaj in order to encourage such a reformation on the lines pioneered by Ram Mohan Roy.

    In a letter to his wife, he said:

    The translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion, and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3000 years.[11]

    Munro had argued conversely that Müller's theories "uprooted our idea of God, for it repudiated the idea of a personal God." He made "divine revelation simply impossible, because it [his theory] reduced God to mere nature, and did away with the body and soul as we know them." Müller remained profoundly influenced by the Kantian Transcendentalist model of spirituality, and was opposed to Darwinian ideas of human development, arguing that "language forms an impassable barrier between man and beast."[12]

    [edit] See also

  • Paul Deussen
  • Sacred Books of the East
  • Aryan Invasion Theory

[edit] References

  1. ^ Müller biography at Gifford Lectures website
  2. ^ Müller, F. Max, Rig-Veda-Samhita: The Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans
  3. ^ Vedanta Society of New York: Ramakrishna
  4. ^ Menant M D, (1907) "Influence of Max Muller's Hibbert Lectures in India", The American Journal of Theology, vol. 11, no. 2, p. 293-307, available to [jstor] subscribers.
  5. ^ Mull Max, Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas (1888), Kessinger Publishing reprint, 2004, p.120; Dorothy Matilda Figueira, Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority Through Myths of Identity, Suny Press, 2002, p.45
  6. ^ "William James, of Harvard, was among the first foreigners to take cognizance of Thought and Reality, already in 1873, then Max Müller of Oxford, in Holland Spruyt, Lund and G.[erardus] Heymans, the latter declared later that Spir exercised a real influence on the elaboration of his thought." Lettres inédites de African Spir au Professeur Penjon (Unpublished Letters of African Spir to Professor Penjon), Neuchâtel, 1948, p. 231, n. 7.
  7. ^ Bodleian Müller archive
  8. ^ Deepa A, Chitra (2007-05-14). "Max Mueller Bhavan gets new identity". The Hindu. http://www.hindu.com/edu/2007/05/14/stories/2007051451470400.htm. Retrieved 2009-06-03. 
  9. ^ (S₣159) (S₣159) (S₣159) Myth/Folklore Scholar Reports
  10. ^ Menant M D, (1907) "Influence of Max Muller's Hibbert Lectures in India", The American Journal of Theology, vol. 11, no. 2, p. 293-307
  11. ^ Müller, Georgina, The Life and Letters of Right Honorable Friedrich Max Müller, 2 vols. London: Longman, 1902.
  12. ^ Müller, F. Max. Three Lectures on the Science of Language, etc., with a Supplement, My Predecessors. 3rd ed. Chicago, 1899, p. 5.

[edit] Bibliography

  • Lourens P. van den Bosch, Friedrich Max Müller: A Life Devoted to the Humanities, 2002. Recent biography sets him in the context of Victorian intellectual culture.
  • Jon R. Stone (ed.), The Essential Max Müller: On Language, Mythology, and Religion, New York: Palgrave, 2002, ISBN 9780312293093. Collection of 19 essays; also includes an intellectual biography.
  • Nirad C. Chaudhuri , Scholar Extraordinary, The Life of Professor the Right Honourable Friedrich Max Muller, P.C.(1974)

[edit] Publications

Müller's scholarly works, published separately as well as an 18-volume Collected Works, include:

  • A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature So Far As It Illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans (1859), 1859
  • Lectures on the Science of Language (1864, 2 vols.), Fifth Edition, Revised 1866
  • Chips from a German Workshop (1867–75, 5vols.)
  • Introduction to the Science of Religion (1873)
  • Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religions of India (1878) [1]
  • India, What can it Teach Us? (1883) [2]
  • Biographical Essays (1884)
  • Upanishads. Wordsworth Editions. 2001 (first 1884). ISBN 184022102. http://books.google.co.in/books?id=-dq1_WC-Y5gC&pg=PA3&dq=katha+upanishad&cd=2#v=onepage&q=katha%20upanishad&f=false. 
  • The German Classics from the Fourth to the Nineteenth Century (1886,2Vols) [3]
  • The Science of Thought (1887,2Vols)
  • Studies in Buddhism (1888) [4] [5]
  • Six Systems of Hindu Philosophy (1899)
  • Gifford Lectures of 1888–92 (Collected Works, vols. 1-4)
    • Natural Religion (1889), Vol. 1, Vol. 2
    • Physical Religion (1891), [6]
    • Anthropological Religion (1892), [7]
    • Theosophy, or Psychological Religion (1893), [8]
  • Auld Lang Syne (1898,2 Vols), a memoir
  • My Autobiography: A Fragment (1901) [9]
  • The Life and Letters of the Right Honourable Friedrich Max Müller (1902, 2 vols.) Vol I [10], Vol II

[edit] External links

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