Statement by the Chairman, Press Council of India, and former Judge, Supreme Court of India.
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In 1981, India made a request for the largest loan ever under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). “Under the access limits then in effect, India could draw up to SDR 7.7 billion ($9 billion) from the Fund over a three-year period (equivalent to 450 percent of its quota).” Of the deal, and of the conditionality to which India agreed (in secret) to adhere, an Executive Director of the IMF said: “[The] Fund could wish no more than to exercise its leverage with all prospective borrowers in the way it did in the Indian case.” The exposure of IMF conditionality by N Ram was the most important event in investigative journalism in India at the time. It is interesting to learn now, from a history of the IMF, that, “because of the sensitivity of the information and the delicacy of the negotiations, [the IMF] management regarded this leak as ‘quite possibly the most serious and damaging . . . in the history of the Fund.’” Read about the IMF-India deal at the link below (pp 709 ff.) http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/history/2001/ch15.pdf The entire book is at http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/history/2001/ For those interested in the articles of that time in facsimile, see: Conditions which IMF will impose for loan, Oct 16, 1981 Consultations with IMF – RV’s letter, Oct 16, 1981 Secret India-IMF discussions over months, Oct 16, 1981 The binding performance clauses and conditions, Oct 16, 1981 IMF management recommends India’s loan to Board, Oct 18, 1981 India’s memorandum to the IMF, Oct 19, 1981 IMF sees Indian economy moving in ‘desirable’ direction, Oct 20, 1981 What are the economic policies IMF presses on India, Oct 20, 1981 World’s most powerful supranational Govt., Oct 20, 1981 India’s liberal attitude to foreign collaboration, Oct 20, 1981 Sunil Janah, the leading Communist photographer of the last years of the freedom movement and early years of Independence, died on June 21 in the United States. New York Times obituary at From a 1998 interview with Sunil Janah: “I am still,’’ Janah says, “undoubtedly a believer in socialism.’’ Capitalism remains for him an “insane system, based on greed. Its basic feature is that the greedier you are, the higher you go – this is hardly a society, it is a wilderness.’’ The full article is below: Documenting society and politics Note: although the link to the photograph mentioned in the article is no longer active, the photograph was archived from the link, and is here. At the University of Virginia, the Board of Visitors, which is led by a real estate developer, decided that the university should be run like a Fortune 500 company, and forced the resignation of the school’s President, Teresa Sullivan. Sullivan’s “supporters have rallied to her defence, rocking the campus with massive protests demanding her reinstatement.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/24/uva-teresa-sullivan-ouster-_n_1619261.html
via Venkatesh Athreya “Take the Flour Back has described genetically modified crops as ‘not properly tested.’ Yet when tests are carried out protesters plan to destroy them before any useful information can be obtained. We don’t see how preventing the acquisition of knowledge is a defensible position in an age of reason. What such groups are planning to do is reminiscent of clearing books from a library because you wish to stop other people discovering their contents. Such actions do not have a proud tradition.” (via R. Ramakumar) Tomas Borge Martinez, one of the founders of Nicaragua’s Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, or FSLN) and former Nicaraguan Interior Minister, died on Monday. The FSLN was formed in July 1961, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, by Carlos Fonseca, Silvio Mayorga, Noel Guerrero (who left the FSLN and the revolutionary movement) and Tomas Borge. The event is described in Borge’s tribute to Carlos Fonseca (who was killed in 1976, three years before the Sandinistas won the revolutionary war), a book titled Carlos, the dawn is no longer beyond our reach. The Associated Press obituary is at: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/01/v-fullstory/2776829/last-living-founder-of-sandinista.html and the New York Times obituary is at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/world/americas/tomas-borge-martinez-dies-at-81.html?hpw http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/01/v-fullstory/2776829/last-living-founder-of-sandinista.html From the period of anti-Somoza struggle and through the 11 years of the first FSLN government and later, Borge was considered to be on the left of the FSLN. Two extracts from Borge’s writing. On being told of the killing of Carlos Fonseca (Borge was then a prisoner in Somoza’s most notorious jail): “The Commander at the Tipitapa prison came to my small cell, jubilant…He gave me the news: ‘Carlos Fonseca is dead.’ After a few moments of silence, I answered: ‘You’re wrong, colonel. Carlos is one of the dead who never die.’ The colonel said, ‘You guys are something else.’” And from Tomas Borge’s poem, “Che,” published in his collection Have You Seen a Red Curtain in My Weary Chamber?: If yet again we divide history We learned, Commandante, that no one How to kill death
“A new report released on Equal Pay Day shows that the yearly median pay for women in America is $10,784 less than their male counterparts.” The wage gap could buy women about 92 weeks of groceries, or 14 months of rent, or 3.7 years’ worth of family health insurance premiums. “Fifteen million households in the United States are headed by women, and almost 30 per cent of them live below the poverty level.” See the report in People’s World at: http://www.peoplesworld.org/wage-gap-costs-women-extra-92-weeks-of-groceries/ The Columbia Journalism School has selected N. Ram’s work on Bofors as one of the 50 greatest stories to have been “reported, investigated, written, produced, filmed, edited, photographed, anchored, and/or tweeted by Columbia journalists” over a century. Three interesting portfolios (scroll down for the photographs): FC Barcelona over the past five years (“In Adoration”) http://www.behance.net/gallery/IN-ADORATION/3346099 The current Barca squad http://www.behance.net/gallery/FC-BARCELONA-VINTAGE-FOOTBALL-CARDS/2834915 …and studies of home and away colours (“When Saturday Comes”) “The IOC and LOCOG now have a stark choice. They can either uphold the view of the Olympics as a positive force, a global moral undertaking — and drop Dow, or they can confirm the view of the Olympics’ detractors that the Games are the plaything of a corporate-dominated, non-transparent old boys’ network.” http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/article2960871.ece Excellent Observer editorial on the case against Luis Suárez, and the wider meaning of the case for racism in football. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/12/observer-editorial-evra-suarez Eduardo Galeano speaks of the Cuban revolution: http://www.granma.cu/ingles/culture-i/19enero-I%20have.html And of Cuba’s Casa de las Américas: April 26, 1959, “in Cuba, saw the founding of the Casa, which has most helped us to discover America and the many Americas which America contains.” http://www.granma.cu/ingles/culture-i/19enero-Words%20of.html By the end of this month, China’s urban population will be larger than its rural population, according to a new Blue Book of statistics published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The current disposable income per capita of a rural resident in China is 36 per cent of the corresponding figure for an urban resident, but the rate of growth of incomes of rural residents (13.6 per cent) is significantly higher than the corresponding rate for urban residents (7.8 per cent). Read the whole report at http://www.china.org.cn/china/2011-12/20/content_24196513.htm In a report on the Havana 2011 International Biotechnology Congress, held from November 28 through December 3, a Granma correspondent writes: Although the issue of genetically modified crops is controversial, recognized experts believe that such varieties can contribute to addressing hunger around the world, at a time when the poor rural population — 70% of the planet’s people — continues to grow and prices of essential foods — rice, corn and wheat — continue to escalate alarmingly. Read the whole report at http://www.granma.cu/ingles/cuba-i/1dic-Cuba%20presents.html (via R. Ramakumar) A photo-feature from The Big Picture. http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/12/homelessness_around_the_world.html |
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