The Canadian Parvasi-issue 66

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The International News Weekly Edit 06 November 02, 2018 | Toronto The w w w . canadianparv asi. c o m Publisher & CEO Associate Editor Editor (India) Online Graphic Designer Official Photographer Contact Editorial Sales Rajinder Saini Meenakshi Saini Gursheesh Kshitiz Dalal Naveen Bashir Nasir editor@canadianparvasi.com sales@canadianparvasi.com Toxic Air Returns Fighting pollution must be a year-round exercise, not a winter ritual With the national capital region reverting to ‘gas chamber’ conditions again – Delhi’s air hit severe levels for the first time this season – it’s clear that government hasn’t done enough to avert the winter disaster. Poor air quality in north Indian cities has become an annual affair, exposing people to a range of health hazards. According to a recent WHO study, over a lakh children under five lost their lives in 2016 because of India’s air pollution. This is clearly a health emergency bigger than anything else and cannot be tackled in a lackadaisical manner. True, there is now a Graded Response Action Plan for Delhi and NCR to mitigate pollution as and when air quality levels plummet. But this still does not address the root causes of pollution that need to be tackled round the year. First and foremost, a solution must be found for the stubble burning problem in Punjab, Haryana and western UP. Despite a ban, farmers in these states continue to burn stubble as they claim they don’t have any inexpensive alternatives. Government needs to rework its policies to ensure zero stubble burning from here on. Similarly, cracking down on burning of garbage and regular vacuum cleaning of roads in cities will go a long way in improving air quality. As will doing away with the bias towards diesel as a fuel for vehicles. Diesel is more prone to adulteration and is a dirtier fuel than its alternatives. Additionally, pollution checks and junking of old vehicles must become stringent. Boosting public transport ought to be a goal that is pursued relentlessly. The Supreme Court had set a deadline of December 31 to increase Delhi’s fleet of buses to 10,000. However, typical administrative issues have delayed procurement, making it unlikely the target will be met. Thus, it’s clear that the common theme here is lack of implementation of policies. Environmental authority chief Bhure Lal’s threat to stop private cars plying in Delhi shows authorities are clutching at straws. Private vehicles are typically better maintained than commercial vehicles, shifting traffic to the latter will likely worsen air pollution. The administrative culture of apathy and kneejerk responses must change. It’s also important to increase the number of air monitoring stations and relay real-time air quality information to the public. Fine-grained information will foster innovation, enhance public awareness and enable people to protect themselves. TNN Is America’s Decade Peaking? Excesses that could end an era of American economic dominance are coming into view Ruchir Sharma Whatever one thinks of President Trump, it’s hard to deny that much of America is feeling great again. Surveys show that consumers have been this confident only twice before, at the height of the economic booms of the 1960s and 1990s, and their mood is bright across income groups, not just among the rich. Small business confidence has not been higher since the surveys began nearly five decades ago. The misery index, invented in the 1970s to describe the agonising combination of inflation and unemployment, is now just 6%, matching the lowest levels of the last half century. Among major economies, only the United States has accelerated significantly in 2018, while Europe, Japan and many emerging economies have slowed markedly. The economy grew at a very strong pace of 3.5% in the third quarter, putting it on track for its best year in more than a decade. This raises a question: Why has the stock market, which normally rises when investors anticipate strong economic growth, been gyrating wildly? Investors may now be expecting America to peak after a hot decade. Even with recent setbacks, the performance gap between the US stock market and other global markets is close to a 100- year high. Money flowing into the United States has also driven up the value of the dollar, which has never been more dominant as the world’s preferred currency. Trump doubters say that this boom began before he took office, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, and they have a point. With its flexible economic system, the United States responded faster than its peers to the debt problems exposed by the crisis. It forced households and troubled financial institutions to rapidly reduce their debt, and easy money provided by the Federal Reserve allowed them to start spending again. Money flowed into the giant tech companies that have underpinned the American economic surge. Just as the 1980s belonged to Japan and the 2000s to emerging nations, the last decade belonged to America. Still, the gap in performance between America and the rest of the world has widened in the last two years under Trump, as his tax cuts and deregulation turbocharged the American economy and its markets. His policies have spurred consumption, and have incentivised companies to buy back more of their stock and bring home some of the money they had stashed overseas. But economies that are hot in one decade rarely stay hot in the next. Every boom eventually creates excesses that sow the seeds of its own destruction, and the excesses that could end the American decade are coming into view. The US economy has been expanding for nine years in a row and if this streak continues through August it will be the longest economic expansion on record. Within a few years after the crisis of 2008, American companies had started running up debts again. It’s not unusual for companies to get overconfident and become saddled with heavy debts late in an expansion. But it is unusual to see the government follow suit, as it has this time. Owing in part to the Trump tax cuts, the United States budget deficit is now around 4% of gross domestic product – the highest it has been outside the immediate aftermath of a recession or a war. That will make it hard for the government to keep stimulating the economy. Growth is expected to slow next year as the impact of the tax cuts fades and the strong dollar cuts into exports. The Fed has been raising rates, and the end of the long easy money party is starting to have an impact on the housing and stock markets. The US stock market is still so swollen it seems unlikely to keep expanding from here. The stock market is now 60% larger than the American economy, a scale it has reached only twice in the past century, during the manias of the 1920s and late 1990s. Moreover, the giant tech companies that have been driving the economy and markets now face a regulatory backlash that could cut into their extraordinarily high profit margins. Trump haters may be tempted to conclude from all this that he is about to lead America into a sudden decline, but that is not the point. This American decade started under President Obama, continued under President Trump and survived congressional gridlock throughout, showing that the economy often rises above politics. The economy is driven less by ideology than by its own internal cycles, and this cycle has been turning in America’s favour for so long that it is unlikely to last much longer. While the excesses of corporate exuberance and government debt are rising in the United States, countries from France to Brazil are in the cleanup phase that often precedes an economic comeback. Most are still working out the excesses of the last decade, and they may suffer further setbacks. But they are approaching the start of a new cycle, while the United States nears the end of an old one. If history is any guide, the next decade is less likely to be great for America than it is for the rest of the world. Source Credit: This article was first published in The Times of India. (The writer is an author and global investor. © 2018 The New York Times (distributed by The New York Times Syndicate) Parvasi weekly & people associated with it are not responsible for any claims made by the advertisement & do not endorse any product or service advertised in Canadian Parvasi. Please consult your lawyer before buying/hiring/contracting through the advertisement Publised in this newspaper. The Canadian Parvasi is in the business of selling space and the clains made by the advertisement are not tested/confirmed by an independent source.
The International News Weekly World November 02, 2018 | Toronto 07 World’s tallest statue unveiled in India Continued from page 01 Nehru’s great-grandson, Rahul Gandhi, leads the Congress Party, and if a unified opposition wins a majority of seats in parliamentary elections due next spring, he could be a candidate for India’s next prime minister. The Patel statue “puts the opposition in a quandary because any criticism of Modi’s showmanship will enable him to depict critics as being legatees of those who denied Patel his rightful place in the nation and history,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a Delhibased political analyst and author of the book “Modi: The Man, The Times.” “In the process, not only will the Statue of Unity literally dwarf statues of all other Indians leaders, but the event will also enable the memory of Sardar to rise imposingly over Congress Party leaders,” Mukhopadhyay said. At 182 metres (597 feet), Patel’s bronze figure in Kevadiya, a village in Gujarat, is one of the tallest statues in the world — almost 10 stories higher than the 153-meter (501-foot) Spring Temple Buddha statue in China and nearly twice the height of the Statue of Liberty, which stands at 93 metres (305 feet). The 42-month project built by 250 engineers and 3,000 workers began in 2013, when Modi was the top elected official in Gujarat. After he became prime minister in 2014, he pledged to complete it despite some critics balking at the nearly $403 million (U.S.) price tag, which they said could be better spent on welfare programs for India’s poor. Standing on the banks of the Narmada River on Wednesday as Indian Air Force pilots dropped flower petals on Patel’s imposing figure, Modi said the statue would serve as a beacon of hope for India and “keep on reminding the whole world” about Patel’s courage. The monument will have a museum with 40,000 documents, 2,000 photographs and a research centre dedicated to Patel’s life and work. “Though Patel was from Gujarat state, all Indians were proud of him because of his stature,” said Rashesh Patel, a 42-year-old businessman among the crowd gathered for the inauguration ceremony. The Patel statue could, however, soon be topped by the 212-meter (696-foot) Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Memorial commemorating a 17th-century Indian warrior king, which is set to open in Mumbai in 2021. Russia imposes sanctions on 322 Ukrainian individuals, 68 entities IANS Moscow : Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree on Thursday introducing special economic measures against 322 Ukrainian citizens and 68 companies amid a prolonged row between Moscow and Kiev. The sanctions, ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin in October, included freezing non-cash funds, nondocumentary securities and property in Russia and banning transfer of funds (withdrawal of capital) outside Russia, Tass news agency reported. The sanctions targeted Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's elder son Alexei, Ukrainian Internal Affairs Minister Arsen Avakov, Parliament Speaker Andriy Parubiy and Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak among other key ministers and important businessmen. The blacklist also included EastOne Group and Toledo Mining Corporation registered in Britain and Ferrexpo registered in Switzerland. "The decree is aimed at countering unfriendly actions against Russian citizens and legal entities on the part of Ukraine and at lifting restrictions imposed earlier by the Ukrainian side on these persons, as well as normalizing bilateral relations," said a government statement. The Russian government said it could lift the sanctions if Ukraine cancels its own restrictive measures against Russia. Relations between Kiev and Moscow have deteriorated since early 2014 over Crimea and armed conflicts in eastern Ukraine. Kiev has imposed a series of sanctions against Russia since then. US withdraws duty-free concession on import of 50 Indian products IANS Washington : The US on Thursday withdrew duty-free concessions on import of around 50 Indian products, mostly from the agriculture and handloom sectors, in line with the protectionist approach to trade put in place by President Donald Trump. The Indian products, among 90 items originating from various countries that had duty-free access in America under its Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), were removed from the GSP list effective November 1 by a US Presidential proclamation earlier this week. Citing the US Trade Act of 1974, the proclamation said "the President may withdraw, suspend or limit application of the duty free treatment that is accorded to specified articles under the GSP when imported from designated beneficiary developing countries." "I have determined to withdraw the application of the duty-free treatment accorded to a certain article," the Trump proclamation said. The GSP is designed to promote economic development by allowing duty-free entry for products from designated beneficiary countries. India has been the largest beneficiary of the GSP and last year its duty-free exports to the US under their trade preference programme amounted to over $5.5 billion. The export of these products to the US will henceforth be subject to regular tariffs. Indian products removed from the GSP include areca nuts, mangoes processed by vinegar or acetic acid, sandstone cut in slabs, whole buffalo skin leather, plain weave handloom cotton fabrics containing over 85 per cotton by weight, handloom carpets and textile floor coverings. Products from other countries like Argentina, Brazil, Thailand, Pakistan, Turkey, the Philippines and Indonesia have also been removed from the GSP list. Chile to join China's Belt and Road Initiative IANS Beijing : Chile is set to join China's mammoth global investment programme, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Chilean Foreign Minister announced during a business forum here on Thursday. Roberto Ampuero said Chile will sign a memorandum of understanding on Friday with the Chinese government to advance and develop the BRI in the context of bilateral relations. "It is a very important decision, also much anticipated by China, which was taken by (Chilean) President Sebastian Pinera," Ampuero told Efe news during the inauguration of a "Chilean Week" in China. The minister said that the BRI was an additional element to strengthen comprehensive bilateral relations, which opens tremendous prospects of cooperation, especially in infrastructure. Ampuero dismissed the doubts expressed by some countries about joining the BRI -- due to the fear of their interests being dependent on Beijing -- by saying that Chile thoroughly analyzes agreements and only signed when it was convinced that the pact was in the country's interests. He added that China was Chile's main trade ally and said that Santiago was interested in strengthening these ties in different spheres. "One of the areas where we agree with China is defending multilateralism and free, open and transparent markets," the minister said, adding that the BRI will help them work at a better rhythm and within a broader conceptual framework. Chile's annual trade with China is worth nearly $35 billion, which amounts to around 26-27 per cent of Chile's total foreign trade. Trade between the two countries has grown 37 per cent this year.
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