Friday, August 24, 2012

LEADERS: EXTRAVAGANCES

...and arm-twists BP with open threats – is this ethical, if not illegal?

Secondly, if 11 people died in the BP spill, the 440,000 who die every year in the US due to tobacco use and the $200 billion this industry costs US every year are bigger reasons why Obama and Emanuel should be threatening the powerful cigarette manufacturers to pay much more than the total of $206 billion they have to pay over 25 years under the Master Settlement Agreement they brilliantly signed with 46 US states in 1998, when the Democrats were in power.

Is Obama doing that? Not at all. While the BP CEO Tony Hayward was chastised openly by Rahm Emanuel for attending a yacht race and publicly humiliated by Obama (who said his meetings with affected parties have educated him on “whose ass to kick”; and that he would have kicked out Hayward), Obama himself was playing golf at Andrews Air Base. And Putin? He was watching with amusement the Moscow court proceedings against oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.


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Thursday, August 23, 2012

THE NIYAMGIRI MINING PROJECT CONTINUES TO TAKE A TOLL ON TIME

SLATED TO BE A MAJOR GAME CHANGER, THE NIYAMGIRI MINING PROJECT CONTINUES TO TAKE A TOLL ON TIME, MONEY AND PATIENCE FOR VEDANTA. WHERE DID THEY GO WRONG?

Perhaps the best antidote to such a situation would have been to have sought clearance to the entire project in one go. That would have also helped Vedanta better gauge the quagmire it later got stuck into. Furthermore, Vedanta has been painstakingly working on communicating to the world that all talks of environmental and tribal devastation are a myth. They argue that the mining takes up only 4-5 sq km of the total 250 sq km and the mining goes up to only 30 metres, whereas the hills are 1050 to 1306 metres above sea level. The company also refutes charges of destroying cultivable area, depleting ground water and polluting the environment.

At the core are the communities that everybody is talking about and claiming to defend. As we had written about extensively in our exclusive on Vedanta’s mining project in an earlier issue of B&E, the company is doing a lot of work for the local communities there as per the SC mandate, which includes education initiatives for children, provision of nutritional food, hospitals and mobile health camps. More important are the livelihood initiatives being initiated for the local communities.

Significantly, there is a division within the tribals for and against the project; the ratio of which depends on whose statistics you choose to believe. While Vedanta is a welcome development for some, those who are not touched by the R&R and the community initiatives will obviously be easily swayed by the NGOs and political elements; and that has in fact happened. As many as 23 Dongria Kondh activists have submitted an appeal to the National Environment Appellate Authority and the hearing is ongoing. Continuous engagement is a must so that rigid mindsets can be bent.

But before that, Vedanta needs the mining operations to commence so that it would be able to source bauxite at competitive rates and have the kind of profits that will sustain its interest. Dr. Mukesh Kumar, COO, Vedanta Aluminium Ltd., Lanjigarh, believes that better communication is the key to results. Patient and persistent engagement is the need of the hour. As it is, they have come too far now to be able to move back.


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Wednesday, August 22, 2012

A world that still waits

More resources need to be diverted to reduce MMR in developing and underdeveloped countries, particularly from military spending

Every time a woman dies while giving birth to a child due to an inefficient and ill equipped medical facilities it is a crippling shame for humanity. Considering how such tragedies still happen in huge numbers, it’s evident that we aren’t really learning or repenting enough.

Recent data revealed by The Lancet, a UK-based medical journal, showed that for the first time in decades, the world has seen a significant decline in death due to pregnancy and childbirth to 342,900 in 2008 from 526,300 in 1980. But the death toll in developing and underdeveloped countries remains pretty startling. Around 85% of the world’s maternity-related deaths take place in Africa alone. Sierra Leone has the highest MMR, as 2,000 out of 1,00,000 population die every year. Over 36,000 women die every year in Nigeria.


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Tuesday, August 21, 2012

WORLD: TROOPS

Stronger nations station their forces to intimidate weaker ones

Even in their nascent democracy, the Iraqi government is forced to pay heed to the popular sentiment; forcing US to commit complete withdrawal by end of 2011. There was a massive rally in Tokyo on January 30 this year to protest against US military’s presence in Okinawa. In Germany as well, the government is echoing the popular sentiment against the presence of US troops.

This new version of imperialism is another way in which stronger countries try to retain positions of power and influence in weaker countries and arm-twist them as per their needs. Such tendencies have to be curbed; as they are self defeating. In the long term, this is a dangerous strategy and breeds hatred and extremism. It backfired for Russia in Afghanistan. It backfired for US in Vietnam. It backfired for India in Sri Lanka. It will backfire even today. The solution is evident – just move out and do something more... stay out!


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Monday, August 20, 2012

‘Smart’phones or just a ‘dumb’ call?

Michael Dell is betting big on smartphones to make up for the lack of any ‘killer app’. Is this a two-years-too-late strategy?

On a fine Tuesday afternoon in Tokyo, a year back, Michael Dell made public his intentions to enter the smartphones market. The world was taken aback. Not because this sounded like a far-fetched dream for Dell, who had been facing some tough quarters in the laptop market of late, but because this announcement came some good quarters too late, for speculations about Dell’s intentions to acquire Palm had been doing the rounds for quite some time then. Cut to the present, his wish to get into the smartphones arena has turned out to be real; getting hold of Palm didn’t. [Hewlett-Packard, the number one vendor in the PC market acquired Palm for $1.2 billion on April 28, 2010.]

Truth is that even 13-months after Dell first announced its entry into the mobile category (a period during which it has already launched a pair of smartphones – one with Google’s Linux-based Android OS – the Dell Mini 3i smartphone, which was launched in the Chinese market in November 2009 and another – the Dell Aero smartphone, which will soon hit US market through AT&T), many in the industry still doubt its future. The whisper in the woods at present however is that Dell is planning to launch five new smartphone models within the next 12 months, which include four Android OS-based and one Windows Phone 7 OS-based smartphones. Ron Garriques, President of Dell Global Consumer Group says, “Our entry into the smart phone category is a logical extension of Dell’s consumer product evolution over the past two years.”

To hit back hard at critics, Dell is also exploring strategic tie-ups to move into newer geographies, the latest being announced on April 14, 2010, with telecom provider Telefonica. The strategic implication of this deal is that, while it will improve Dell’s chances at newer hardware and services, on the other it will give Dell’s smartphones access to the Latin American and European markets. Dell is also looking at strengthening its presence across emerging Asian economies like China & India. So can smartphones do to this once-Lord-of-the-PC-Ring, what the iPhone did to Apple (the iPhone is the highest selling product under the Apple unbrella today, acccounting for 40.33% of its revenues in Q1, 2010)?

From a category perspective, Dell may just have taken the right gambit. As per the Q1, 2010 report by IDC, the global smartphone market grew by twice as much as the overall mobile phone market on a year-on-year basis (56.7% vis-a-vis 21.7%). Better still, as compared to the previous year, the quarter gone by saw smartphones account for 18.8% of all mobile phones shipped during the quarter, as compared to 14.4% a year back. Also, all the other players have contributed in a fairly equal proportion to this growth. While Apple grew by 131.6%, other players like Motorola, HTC, Nokia and RIM also maintained high double-digit improvements in volumes (growth figures of 91.7%, 73.3%, 56.9% and 45.2% respectively). The report also highlighted how a total of 54 million smartphones were shipped in the first quarter of this year – an increase of 56.7% from the same quarter a year ago. These are statistics enough to prove a heated-up table, enough to justify Dell’s timing to call it a bluff, with smartphones market on a higher growth trajectory as compared to even the overall mobile phone market.




 
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