147 die in temple stampede

Sunny Sebastian

Morning chants at the Jodhpur shrine turned into shrieks of hapless victims

— Photo: Courtesy Rajasthan Patrika 
 
HORRENDOUS TRAGEDY: Some of the injured and their anxious kin wait for help, after the deadly stampede in the Chamunda Devi temple in Jodhpur on Tuesday, the first day of the Navratra festival season. Several other pilgrims lie fatally crushed.

JODHPUR: Tragedy struck the Sun City of Rajasthan on the first day of the nine-day navaratra festivities on Tuesday when 147 pilgrims were killed in an early morning stampede outside the Chamunda Devi temple on a hillock adjoining the Mehrangarh Fort.

Most of the victims were either boys or men in the age group of 15-40 years. Fifty-nine people sustained injuries.

Of the deceased, two persons were from Sangli in Maharashtra, one from Punjab and the rest from Jodhpur and adjoining areas. The bodies of most of the victims were released to the relatives by afternoon.

However, there is some scepticism about the tally as the initial count of bodies released from some half-a-dozen hospitals here had touched 196. The district and divisional authorities explained the disparity in the figure to counting some bodies twice. A clear picture in this regard would emerge only on Wednesday.

The victims were either trampled to death or had died of suffocation. Some pilgrims standing in the men’s queue lost balance on the slopy terrain, made slippery by the flowing coconut water on the road leading to the hill shrine. The installation (stapana) ceremony for the navaratras was scheduled between 6.23 a.m. and 7 .37 a.m. Around 9,000 people had stood in queues on the 2-km mountain road. The morning chants soon turned into shrieks of hapless victims as the commotion in the blind alley type of lanes led to unprecedented chaos.

Eyewitnesses talked about some pushing and shoving in the queue by some pilgrims for an early darshan. The authorities rejected reports of any bomb scare and denied any instance of eve-teasing led to the stampede.

“There were separate queues for men, women and children. As the stampede took place in the men’s queue all the victims happened to be men. People started falling over one another. The deaths were due to suffocation and choking,” Divisional Commissioner of Jodhpur Kiran Soni Gupta told The Hindu on phone.

About 20 people died on the spot and the others in the hospitals, including the Mahatma Gandhi Hospital, Mathura Das Mathur Hospital, Kamla Nehru Hospital and Goyal Hospital.

Ms. Gupta said 57 injured people were out of danger. The condition of two persons in the intensive care unit was critical.

The help of the Defence forces was sought in relief and evacuation of the affected. Rajasthan Governor Shailendra Kumar Singh, while expressing anguish over the catastrophe, felt temple premises in general should have better arrangements for pilgrims on special days.

Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, who reached Jodhpur from Banswara in the afternoon, announced a relief of Rs.2 lakh to the families of the deceased and Rs.50, 000 to those seriously injured.

A distressed Ms. Raje, suffering from high fever, reportedly lost her balance at the Banswara helipad when she was informed about the tragedy. She was to be taken to a guesthouse of the Tripura Sundari temple for resting.

Talking to journalists in Jodhpur after visiting the hospitals, Ms. Raje said the Additional Chief Secretary would hold an inquiry into the circumstances which led to the tragedy. The government later announced a judicial inquiry by a retired Rajasthan High Court judge. The report will be submitted in three months’ time.

The scion of the Jodhpur royal family, Gaj Singh, who visited the site, said he would institute a private inquiry. Chamunda Devi is the family deity of the Jodhpur aristocracy.

Errors of the Commission

Pankaj Vohra, Hindustan Times

Email Author

September 28, 2008

First Published: 23:19 IST(28/9/2008)

Last Updated: 23:24 IST(28/9/2008)

The findings of the GT Nanavati Commission Report into the Godhra incident on February 27, 2002 are essentially a weak attempt to absolve Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the Sangh Parivar from the responsibility of engineering riots in the aftermath of the fire in Sabramati Express. The timing of the report’s submission, which seeks to show that the fire was a result of a pre-planned conspiracy to target kar sevaks returning from Ayodhya, leaves several doubts in the mind. The timing coincides with a conscious effort being made by a section of the BJP to project Modi, accused of mass murders by his opponents, on the national stage.

Propounding the conspiracy theory six-and-a-half years and several extensions after the incident took place is in total variance with the findings of another Supreme Court Judge, UC Banerjee who had concluded that the fire was accidental. What is most alarming is that the rumours that were spread in the wake of the Godhra train tragedy led to the worst riots in the state conducted by lumpen elements of the Parivar and supported by the state police.

Several questions are bound to be asked after the release of the report as it has failed to answer many questions. Further, it is being argued that no commission can submit its report in parts and, therefore, the presentation of the report in the Gujarat Assembly itself lacks legal sanction. Second, there are allegations that Justice Nanawati’s son, Maulik, was appointed as the standing counsel of the Gujarat government by Modi. This itself raises several questions about legal ethics and whether the judge should have been on the panel if the charge is correct.

There are several other factors that show that the ‘clean chit’ and the ‘conspiracy’ theory are bunkum. The then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, on his visit to the state in early April 2002, had advised Modi to observe the tenets of governance (“Raj dharma”). He was sure that something wrong had happened and even wanted the CM to be removed. But at the BJP meeting in Goa in mid-April, the younger leaders, along with Advani, helped bail out the CM and Vajpayee did his infamous ‘flip-flop’.

What nails the lie in the report are the sworn testimonies of three IPS officers before the Banerjee Commission: Raju Bhargava, SSP, Panchmahal, RV Sreekumar, then Additional DGP, state IB, and Rahul Sharma, DCP, Control Room, Ahmedabad. Bhargava and Sreekumar had said the state CID had no information about the return of the kar sevaks by the Sabarmati Express on February 27. The departure of the sevaks had been recorded, but no information on their return was available with the state police. When the CID did not have information, how could common people accused of burning the train know that kar sevaks were on board?

Second, the local units of the VHP had provided certain phone numbers in Pakistan from where calls are believed to have been made or where the calls were made on cell phones by some of those arrested. Rahul Sharma, while examining the records, did not find any such communication activity between Godhra and Pakistan.

The fire had broken out in coach S-6 where 59 of the 200 passengers died. On the basis of meticulously kept railway records, it was established that the fire broke out at 7.55 am — not at 8.20 am as stated by the local police. Those familiar with train travel will concede that no coach can be locked from outside except by a key that is with the guard. Also, the hurry with which coach S-7 was disposed of prevented forensics from examining the vestibule connecting it with S-6 to ascertain the truth in the ‘petrol-pouring’ theory.

There are several other loopholes and the Americans are no fools to have repeatedly refused to give a US visa to Modi. Justice Nanavati has let down not only the judiciary but also the people of India in concealing the truth. Between us.

Adam Smith isn’t dead

Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, Hindustan Times

Email Author

September 28, 2008

First Published: 20:54 IST(28/9/2008)

Last Updated: 20:57 IST(28/9/2008)

Capitalism does two things well. Creating wealth and making a bad name for itself. The sub-prime crisis and its fallout have meant a lot of the second, not much of the first. However, Adam Smith isn’t dead. Capitalism is just making a poor job of adjusting to a new financial order. And a large part of why it’s tripping is bad governance. Here’s a market-friendly guide:

Sub-prime is a consequence of greedy politics: Sub-prime’s origins lie with the US government. Sub-prime loans were mortgages doled out to people who couldn’t afford them. One variety was ‘stated loans’ where a person just had to declare his income, without proof, and get a cheque.

The largest players in this were the Federal National Mortgage Association, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation and the State-owned federal home loan banks. The first two alone underwrote 44 per cent of the US sub-prime market in 2004. Better known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they were private in theory but crony capitalist in fact.

Under the aegis of providing ‘affordable housing’ — giving home loans to people normal banks wouldn’t touch — the US Congress exempted Fannie Mae and Co. from the regulatory and accounting norms of private banks. In return, these institutions showered political constituencies with dud loans and donated money to campaign coffers.

Because it was correctly believed these hybrid financial institutions could count on an implicit government bailout, they were dubbed ‘government-sponsored enterprises’. Three-quarters of the $1.3 billion sub-prime loans were handed out by these enterprises. The US government spent $400 billion bailing them out, as opposed to $113 billion for private sector firms who joined in the feeding frenzy. Sub-prime’s rise was socialism masquerading as capitalism and capitalism falling for the disguise.

Wall Street’s financial bust shows markets work: When Lehman Brothers bought up securities backed by dud loans with borrowed money, it decided to load up on risk. Months before the present meltdown, I was told by a senior Federal Reserve Bank official that the market would be better off if stand-alone investment banks like Lehman died — they were gambling on credit cards.

If Lehman had survived and prospered - that would have been market failure. Instead, capitalism put it to the sword. Economists like Joseph Schumpeter adopted nihilism’s description of capitalism as ‘creative destruction’ but argued this was the system’s strength. When firms get greedy and stupid the market wipes them out, making way for more sensible firms. American International Group, as a boring insurance firm, was doubly stupid to have submerged itself in sub-prime and deserved to die. Politics and panic are why the only price it is paying is 11 per cent interest on its $85 billion US government handout.

Yes, it took a long time for supposedly efficient markets to bring down these faulty towers. There was regulatory failure by the US central bank under the once-sainted Alan Greenspan. Gree-nspan, a laissez faire advocate who headed a government regulator, also believed central banks shouldn’t pre-empt asset bubbles, that they should just clean up after they popped.

He should have been warier. Over the past decade or so, the world has become submerged in an enormous tidal wave of dollars, with credit growing nearly a fifth more each year than the real world economy. Capital was abundant, so it became cheap and eventually abused.

Forget sub-prime, this cheap capital has led to speculative bubbles in everything from petrol to platinum. Two years ago,
at an Aspen world economy conference, I heard analysts fret that $400 billion worth of the homes being bought in the US were being bought as investments. When, they asked, would someone stop this? The market did. It just took a while because the money flood obscured the reality.

Government regulation is no answer to modern finance: The experience of quasi-government enterprises like Fannie Mae and the US central bank over the past decade shows bureaucrats are as clueless about the financial world as their private sector counterparts.

A simple example are the new-fangled mathematical models being used by both regulators and bankers to calculate the risk in buying and selling things like sub-prime mortgages. The nerds who did quantitative analysis, ‘quants’ in New York parlance, underestimated the sub-prime risk. What they accomplished was to take bad debts, run them through a computer, and then stamp them with ‘AA’ credit ratings. Everyone fell for it, regulators and investors alike, because the stochastic calculus-based financial superstructure was indecipherable. Lehman and the others do not seem to have strayed from the rules, the world of finance had moved beyond the rules.

Not everyone in Wall Street believed in these models. Goldman Sachs didn’t, which is why it survived the panic. Last year, while being quizzed by a Manhattan fund manager on India’s financial sector, I was asked, “Have the MIT quant guys got to India yet?” No He smiled, “Thank god.” I presume he bought Indian bank stock after that.

The other reason the world will have to find ways to let markets be regulated by economics is that bailouts are getting too big for governments. Washington has deep pockets. But Deutsche Bank has liabilities equal to 80 per cent of Germany’s GDP. In case of a meltdown, what would Berlin do?

History won’t declare this the day capitalism died, Perhaps the Day that Lehman Died. Capitalism will go on, not because it is perfect but because no alternative comes close in terms of creating wealth. My guess is historians will look back on what has happened — and the crisis has a few more phases to go — and call it the Day 21st Century Capitalism was Born. Much of what has happened is a consequence of the intersection of two or three developments in the international economic system.

One, already mentioned, was the sheer expansion of capital in the economy. In 1945, only the US generated surplus funds for the world economy. Today, everyone from China to India, Brazil to Bahrain, adds to the global pool. When its capital that’s on tap, no one has the necessary plumbing. This capital flow then joined with an information technology revolution whose intangible impact on finance, one, reduced regulation to guesswork for people like Greenspan and, two, paved the way for quant-based risk assessment. Most quants used a measure known as Value at Risk that drew on historical data. But what if you live in ahistorical times?

Finally, because even regulators are groping with the new financial order, the man on the street is less willing to trust governments to do the right thing. This is crucial because much State intervention in the market is not based on financial logic; it’s just a gut judgement of what is needed to restore public confidence. If Joe Investor believes central bankers don’t know what they’re doing, he will join a vicious cycle of financial panic. If he does so, he will join a virtuous cycle of financial recovery.

Welcome to 21st century capitalism. The ride has just begun.

Majority of Australians still hold racist feelings

29 Sep 2008, 0827 hrs IST,PTI

MELBOURNE: Despite international migration growing in Australia, around majority of Australians still hold racist feelings with one in 10 Australians having those views, according to a new study.

New South Wales tops the list with racist views, with lead researcher on the project Kevin Dunn pin pointing Sydney being the focus of international migration to Australia.

The study, led by human geography and urban studies Professor Dunn and his team from Western Sydney University, has revealed racism in Australia has waned over the years but the figures remain high, according to an AAP report.

The Anti-Racism Research Project had randomly surveyed over 12,500 people in different studies during the past eight years.

Prof Dunn attributes the results to people's overarching views.

"It's an indicator of a narrow view of what constitutes Australianism," he was quoted by the report.

When people were asked which cultural/ethnic groups do not fit into Australian society, NSW topped the list with 46 per cent of respondents saying some ethnic groups should not be in the country.

Dunn said "The most often-mentioned groups were Muslims or people from the Middle East." The overall figures surge to 65 per cent for people over 65 but drop to 31 per cent for those aged 18 to 34.

"It's too high, isn't it," Dunn said adding "We've got to bring that down." On average, about one in 10 people said it was not good for people of different cultures to marry and about the same number said not all races are equal. "It's only about one in 10 people now in Australia across the different states that would have that sort of view the racial supremacists for instance," Dunn said.  

Washington Mutual is largest US bank failure

26 Sep, 2008, 1116 hrs IST, REUTERS

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON: Washington Mutual Inc was closed by the U.S. government in by far the largest failure of a US bank, and its banking assets were sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co for $1.9 billion.

The rescue marks a historic step to clean up a U.S. financial system littered with toxic mortgage debt.

Washington Mutual, the largest U.S. savings and loan, was closed by the federal Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp was named receiver. Customers should expect business as usual on Friday, the FDIC said.

The bailout came after the thrift suffered deposit outflows of $16.7 billion since September 15, the OTS said.

"With insufficient liquidity to meet its obligations, WaMu was in an unsafe and unsound condition to transact business," the OTS said.

Seattle-based Washington Mutual has about $307 billion of assets and $188 billion of deposits, regulators said. The nation's largest previous banking failure was Continental Illinois National Bank & Trust, which had $40 billion of assets when it collapsed in 1984. 

The transaction gives JPMorgan roughly 5,400 branches, and fulfills JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon's long-held goal of becoming a retail bank force in the western United States.

It comes four months after JPMorgan acquired the failing investment bank Bear Stearns Cos at a fire-sale price.
Shares of Washington Mutual plunged 80 cents to 89 cents in after-hours trading after falling 57 cents to $1.69 in regular trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

NEGOTIATIONS

A transaction would follow more than a week of negotiations over the fate of Seattle-based Washington Mutual, which attracted interest from several large North American and European banks, as well as private equity firms, despite soaring mortgage losses and evaporating investor confidence.

It also appears to be a costly defeat for David Bonderman and his private equity firm TPG Inc, which in April invested $2 billion in Washington Mutual as part of a $7 billion capital-raising by the thrift. TPG was not available for comment.

Washington Mutual's $227 billion book of real estate loans, more than half of which comes from home equity loans, and adjustable-rate and subprime mortgages now considered risky, ensconced the thrift on the critical list of financial institutions needing help, analysts said.

Its fate appeared to grow more precarious after problems with mortgage-related debt led to last week's bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc and the near demise of insurance company American International Group Inc.

The addition of Washington Mutual would make JPMorgan close in size to Citigroup Inc, now the largest U.S. bank by assets. It would trail Bank of America Corp assuming that bank, which now ranks second in assets, completes its planned purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co.

Once something of a golden child at Citigroup Inc before Sanford "Sandy" Weill engineered his ouster in 1998, Dimon has been carving for himself something of a role as a Wall Street savior.

Some historians see parallels with the legendary financier John Pierpont Morgan, who ran J.P. Morgan & Co and was credited with intervening to end a banking panic in 1907.

Bank of America Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis has also been credited with helping steady Wall Street, or at least reduce damage, with his acquisitions this year of Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Financial Corp, the troubled mortgage lender that was once the nation's largest.

HARD-HIT

It was not immediately clear how much of Washington Mutual's loans might have been eligible for the bailout. The thrift has a significant presence in California and Florida, two of the states hardest hit by the nation's housing crisis. It also has a significant presence in the New York City area.

The thrift had long been expected to sell itself after amassing $6.3 billion of losses in the previous three quarters. It had also projected $19 billion of mortgage losses through 2011, but many analysts said that was too low.

Washington Mutual earlier this month ousted Chief Executive Kerry Killinger, who spearheaded the thrift's growth as well as its expansion in subprime and other risky mortgages, and replaced him with Alan Fishman, the former chief executive of Brooklyn, New York's Independence Community Bank Corp.

Iraq signs billion-dollar power deals with GE, Siemens

28 Sep, 2008, 0132 hrs IST, REUTERS

DUBAI: Iraq has signed preliminary deals worth billions of dollars with General Electric Co and Siemens for equipment to almost double electricity generation capacity, an energy official said on Saturday.

The deals with GE, Siemens and a third company would be worth a total of $7 billion to $8 billion, Iraq's Electricity Minister Karim Waheed told Reuters. Years of war, sanctions and neglect have battered Iraq's power grid and the country suffers chronic power shortages.

The capital Baghdad receives only a few hours of electricity a day. The deals would mark a big step in the country's reconstruction, Waheed said. "These deals will help us to end the electricity supply problem by 2012," Waheed said on a private visit to the United Arab Emirates.

Iraq signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) earlier this month for U.S. giant General Electric to supply turbines to generate 6,800 megawatts of power, Waheed said. He declined to say how much Iraq would pay GE for the equipment, but said each megawatt would cost between $700,000 and $800,000.

That would give a value of between $4.8 billion and $5.4 billion. The country has signed a second MOU with Germany's Siemens to supply equipment to generate another 2,000 MW, he added. That deal would be worth between $1.4 billion and $1.6 billion. Baghdad was negotiating with a third company for another 1,000 MW, he said, declining to give further details. The three deals would enable Iraq to add around 10,000 MW to installed capacity by around 11,000 MW.

Damage to the power stations, lack of maintenance and drought mean Iraq's actual power production is well under capacity at around 5,500 MW. Demand stands at around 11,000 MW, Waheed said. Iraq plans to approach engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firms to build the plants once the deals are signed, he added.

While big international companies were still reluctant to send people to work in Iraq, improvements in security had improved Baghdad's chances of attracting companies to undertake the work, he said. Iraqi oil officials will meet Russia's Technoprom Export on Oct. 12 to review a $124 million deal to repair 400 MW of power generation capacity in the southern city of Basra.

The World Bank will fund the deal, he added. The deal was one of several frozen after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Iraq is also negotiating with Russia's Power Machines to revive another old deal to build two plants with 160 MW of capacity each in Iraq's north, he added. Iraq signed a deal with GE for three power plants worth $480 million in June.  

T-Mobile Lifts 1G-byte Limit on Android Phone

Thursday, September 25, 2008 11:20 AM PDT

T-Mobile is backpedaling on the limit it placed on the so-called unlimited data plan that will accompany its Android phone, but the operator isn't saying exactly what the new terms will be.

When T-Mobile introduced the G1, the first phone based on Google's Androidmobile platform, on Tuesday, it said that subscribers would be able to sign up for a US$35-per-month unlimited data plan. But the fine print on the Web site for the phone said that users would actually be limited to 1G byte of data usage per month, after which their connection would slow to a 50K bps or less rate.

The operator quickly came under fire for the limit, which is relatively low for people who hope to use the phone regularly to view maps, check e-mail, watch YouTube videos and browse the Internet.

On Thursday, T-Mobile said it removed the 1G-byte limit from its policy statement. But it didn't say that users would have true unlimited download capability. "The specific terms for our new data plans are still being reviewed and once they are final we will be certain to share this broadly with all customers," the company said in a statement.

The Web site now has a more generic statement about possible repercussions for people who use what T-Mobile calls a "disproportionate" amount of bandwidth. "To provide the best network experience for all of our customers we may temporarily reduce data throughput for a small fraction of customers who use a disproportionate amount of bandwidth," the fine printreads.

Mobile operators routinely cap the amount of data that users can download, even in their so-called unlimited plans. They say that the cap ensures that a few heavy users don't hog the limited available bandwidth to the detriment of other users.

T-Mobile, however, might be at a particular disadvantage compared to its competitors. The operator is only just now launching its third-generation data network, currently available in 16 markets, with a total of 27 expected to be live by the middle of November. Some operators face challenges when first launching new networks, as they try to predict the demand for services and plan their capacity accordingly.

Q&A: Infosys European chief BG Srinivas

Written by Rosalie Marshall 

Computing, 24 Sep 2008

What is your role in Infosys? 
I have headed up the European operations for the past four years, concentrating on ways the business in Europe can grow. We reached close to $1bn in revenue last year.

We started restructuring the business at the end of last year to bring more vertical expertise to our customers. We now have six industry verticals - banking, manufacturing, life sciences, energy, telecoms, and communication and media. I head up the manufacturing division, focusing on aspects such as product design and development.

How does the proposed £400m acquisition of Axon fit into Infosys' strategy?
We want to expand the number of business transformation deals we form. At the moment our consulting services for SAP and Oracle applications is growing. Around 24 per cent of our global business footprint is in ERP consulting.

Are there likely to be more acquisitions of this kind in the near future?
Not really. Axon is a sizable acquisition and we need to concentrate on making it an effective purchase, so it is unlikely we will make more acquisitions in this area for the time being.

But if there is one company out there that has a strong intellectual property offering or service line footprint, we might consider making them an offer.

At Infosys, we concentrate on making a select few acquisitions and then making them work. For example, we acquired Expert Information Systems in Australia and within 18 months it had been integrated extremely well with the rest of the company.

How are you keeping up with new IT trends and the desire by businesses to adopt certain technologies such as service-oriented architecture, open source and green IT?
We encourage our clients to look at new ways of delivering services to increase their flexibility and reduce fixed costs.

We have recently launched a software-as-a-service procurement platform, including on-demand procure-to-pay and order-to-cash solutions. We are also about to launch an on-demand human resources platform.

As well as advising organisations on how they can become more environmentally friendly, are you getting any requests from clients to record and report on your environmental footprint for their contracts?
A few companies are beginning to ask for such reports but it is really just the beginning.

Do you believe you are keeping up to speed with your main competitors, such as TCS and Wipro, in your ability to offer customers new types of technology?
We have only just started to compete with other Indian providers this last year as the service industry inside India has started to grow. Our main competitors are the big European firms.

But yes, I believe we are delivering customers what they want. This is shown by 97 per cent of our business coming from repeat customers.

Will Infosys continue to build its new software development centre in West Bengal, and how will it deal with the dispute there arising from the opposition to the Tata Group's plans to build the world's cheapest car? I heard Infosys might be forced to rethink its plans?
We have just been watching the situation evolve. I don't believe we have been impacted yet.

There have been a large number of reports, following the Lehman Brothers collapse and the sale of Merrill Lynch, that a number of Indian providers have launched recruitment freezes. How has the current turmoil in the finance sector affected Infosys?
A lot of those reports are purely speculation. The Infosys planning cycle is three years, broken down into chunks of periods. This allows us to be flexible and adapt to big changes in the marketplace.

On the subject of the economy, there are mixed reports on whether Indian providers are likely to benefit from the economic slowdown in the western markets. What is your view?
We are expecting an impact and a possible slowdown as clients rethink their budget strategy. However, we expect clients that are challenged with their IT spend to play into our business model. There could be a temporary lull. Anyway, it is not the case that all sectors are going through much pain, in relative terms.

But have you noticed any change in contract size or length?
I can tell you that in the past six months we have noticed no significant changes in contracts.

And how about trends towards multi-sourcing? On average, how many providers do your customers hold outsourcing contracts with?
We offer consulting expertise on multi-sourcing strategies and we tell the customer to adopt a few best-of-breed partners. Most enterprises hold three outsourcing partners.

In what circumstances would Infosys be considered a best-of-breed partner?
In consulting, package implementation, application management and business process outsourcing.

Top Dishonours: India slips on corruption index

Shreya Dhoundial / CNN-IBN

New Delhi: The sensex is crashing, inflation is on the rise, but there's one place where it's business as usual. It's the most corrupt nation's list.

According to this year's Transperency International Report, out of 180 countries, India is the 85th most corrupt nation in the world. It's the same down-hill journey. This time India has tumbled from rank 72 last year to rank 85 this year - mostly thanks to inspired moments like the cash-for-vote scam.

Country President Transperency International India, Admiral R H Tahiliani says, "When the world sees that at the highest level people can be bought what are they going to think of us."

Small mercy is that we are at least better off than Pakistan at 134. China's integrity index is marginally better than ours as it comes 72nd on the list and Somalia is the worst at 180. Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden are the least corrupt countries.

The dubious distinction of the most corrupt sectors according to Indians goes to the police department closely followed by the political establishment and the lower judicary.

Executive Director Transperency International India, Anupama Jha says, "That's the trend the world over. Corruption in politics is a given, but over the years the perception of the judicary has changed too."

The state-by-state survey by Transparency International India and the Centre for Media Studies, New Delhi places four Indian states in its "Alarmingly Corrupt" category.

The four states are - Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Assam.

The next rung of "Very Highly Corrupt" states include Karnataka - which was ranked 17th in a 2005 Transparency International India survey - Rajasthan as well as Tamil Nadu.

Not as notorious but still "Highly Corrupt" are the five states of Chhatisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Kerala and Orissa.

Meanwhile, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Uttarakhand and West Bengal are the "Moderately Corrupt" states of India.

The survey is a part of efforts by Transparency International India to reduce corruption by promoting and supporting transparent and ethical practices in the Government sector.

And so even as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is signing nuclear deals and the country is on its way to becoming a global powerhouse, India still loves being corrupt.

LOW INTEGRITY

Corruption in India has increased marginally in the last two years, taking its position from 72 to 85 in the list of world's corrupt countries, according to global watchdog Transparency International.

The Corruption Perception Index, prepared on the basis of surveys conducted in 180 countries by 13 international agencies associated with Transparency International, puts India's integrity score at 3.4 as against 3.5 last year.

India and China were at par last year in the corruption index. But this year, China's position is 72. Pakistan with 2.5 integrity score has been ranked at 134 in the list.

The integrity score is prepared by a mathematical calculation by a Switzerland-based professor on the basis of the findings of the surveys on governance. Electoral and political systems in India were the major sources of corruption.

HC slams MNS, likens Raj Thackeray to terrorist

Nimisha Srivastava / CNN-IBN

Mumbai: Beating up taxi drivers, threatening shop owners and making inflammatory statements - the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) led by Raj Thackeray has done it all.

It finally took the Bombay High Court to say enough is enough. During the hearing of a case filed by the Retailers Welfare Association, Justice J N Patel slammed the state government for not acting on the law and order problems caused by the MNS.

He said: "Some people try to enforce the law as if there is no government and they challenge you to touch them and the mighty state is helpless. If you don't have the political will to do something about it, it just gives the message to the public that you cannot solve law and order problems."

Comparing the MNS actions with terrorism Justice J N Patel further said: "Last time you caught him (Raj Thackeray), he came out like a hero. We used to worship Bhagat Singh and all but now the concepts seem to have changed. We seem to be worshipping terrorists."

Retailers Welfare Association Secretary, Viren Shah said, "The judge has raised the important point about the security of the common man."

The state government has not reacted to these observations by Justice Patel, but the MNS has gone on the defensive.

MNS Spokesperson, Shishir Shinde said, "Over 1,200 of our party workers have been arrested. We only requested the shopowners to have signboards in Marathi. The government was doing nothing about it."

But the MNS was not there to present this view in court on Thursday.

The petitioners' lawyer, Majid Memon said, "They go around making such a noise, so why weren't they present in court on Thursday?"

The High Court has given the state government time till October 16 to take some strict action against the MNS and Raj Thackeray. It remains to be seen whether the state government will bow down to the compulsions of realpolitik or the rule of law.