Those at the top and those at the bottom

And here is one story from other corner. INDIA

"BANGALORE - If "simple living, high thinking" was what Indians of another era aspired to, today it is a different creed that's driving their lifestyles. If you have the money, modern Indians would argue, flaunt it. And they seem to have plenty of money to flaunt.

Take Mukesh Ambani. The chairman of Reliance Industries, number 14 on Forbes' list of the world's richest and India's richest resident, is building a vertical palace for himself in Mumbai that will rise to a height of 570 feet. The "palace in the sky" will have three floors of gardens, two floors of swimming pools, a helicopter pad and space to park 170 cars. His wife, mother and two kids will occupy the top four floors. The family of six will be waited on by over 600 servants.

Or consider liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya, whose net assets have been pegged at about US$1.5 billion. He has some 42 homes scattered across the world, 250 vintage cars, a customized Boeing 727 and two other corporate jets, and three yachts, including one once owned by actor Richard Burton. He wears gold chains, diamond earrings and a big bracelet with his initials spelled out in diamonds.


When steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal got his daughter married in the summer of 2004, guests received a 20-page silver-cased invitation. The engagement and the wedding were in French palaces, Kylie Minogue entertained the guests. The wedding was a $60-million Bollywood production. Hotelier Vikram Chatwal's week-long wedding to model Priya Sachdev spanned three Indian cities and is estimated to have cost about $80 million. The icing on the wedding was the star invitee - former US president Bill Clinton. The wedding of the two sons of Subrato Roy, head of the Sahara Group, had about 11,000 guests, including powerful politicians, the entire Indian cricket team and Bollywood celebrities.

India was once associated with Gandhian austerity. The unmaterialistic "other-worldliness" of Indians was often seen as a trait unique to this country.

Indian leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru gave up lucrative professions and comfortable lifestyles to plunge themselves in the freedom struggle. They dressed simply in khadi (handspun cotton fabric), ate and traveled like the masses. Gandhi celebrated his austerity, wearing little more than a loincloth. Simplicity carried a statement.

At her wedding in 1942, Indira Gandhi, daughter of Nehru and later India's prime minister, wore a khadi sari made of yarn her father wove while in prison during the freedom struggle. The "jewelry" she wore at her wedding was made of flowers strung together by the family gardener. Whatever happened to that understated elegance of the Indian wedding?

Indeed, Hindu weddings have always been elaborate affairs, with celebrations running into several days and hundreds, even thousands being invited for the ceremonies. Yet a wedding had a personal touch to it, even if the invitees were distant cousins one had never met previously. It was still an occasion when people would invite their kindergarten teachers, the family cook and the old chowkidar (watchman) and their entire families.

Not anymore, it seems.

It is unlikely that Mittal or Roy would have known personally even a tenth of the people they invited to their weddings
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JA04Df04.html

Illegal immigrants prefer jail in UAE



Hyderabad, Jan. 5: A large number of illegal immigrants from Andhra Pradesh staying back in the UAE after the end of the amnesty in November have been jailed. They preferred imprisonment to facing moneylenders and possible unemployment at home, an official said. Another 1,000 illegals are still at large, said Mr K.V. Shamshuddin, head of the UAE-based Pravasi Bandhu Association. Another 300 people from the state who could not pay for their air tickets to fly home have been jailed.

According to official sources, at least 72,333 illegal immigrants who collected their out-passes have not left the country. If caught, they face three years in jail and deportation. At least 4,000 people have been arrested so far. "If the police catches them they are ready to go to jail. They say they can at least get food in jail," Mr Shamshuddin said.

Despite this, people are still paying lakhs of rupees to agents to enter the UAE on visit visas. They will settle into any job that they find and stay back to become illegals. Mr Shamshuddin said, "It is shocking. They are paying Rs 75,000 to Rs 1.5 lakh to agents while the visit visas cost 100 dirhams." Mr Shamshuddin told this correspondent that police had intensified inspection of apartments and other residential areas to arrest illegal immigrants. "Immigrants are collecting empty soft drink cans on the streets to earn a livelihood," he said. Illegal women immigrants were working as housemaids at night to avoid arrest. "Recently an illegal immigrant from AP committed suicide. The family is not ready to take the body stating money-lenders at home will come to know and will pressurise them to repay loans," he said.

He said that about 100 migrants committed suicide last year in the UAE. "We came to know that several of them who went back home in Andhra Pradesh also committed suicide. We started a programme known as Santvanam to help those in distress," Mr Shamshuddin said. The appreciating rupee has also hit earnings. According to the Pravasi Bandhu Association, 72 dirhams in 2002 used to fetch Rs 1,000. Last year, it took 94 dirhams to make Rs 1,000.

"The cost of living has multiplied, rents have tripled but there has been no hike in salary," Mr Shamshuddin said. "Less money and more expenses are leaving people in lurch." Meanwhile in Karimnagar, police launched a special drive against errant Gulf agents in Sircilla and Jagtial divisions. The police had registered cases against several bogus Gulf agents in Konaraopet, Chandurthi, Yellareddypet, Boinpalli mandals in Sircilla division and also in Sarangapur and few other mandals in Jagtial division.

A major chunk of the district based Gulf migrants hail from the two divisions. On Saturday, M. Lingaiah, 30, a debt-ridden Gulf expatriate, attempted suicide by setting himself ablaze at Marrigadda in Chandurthi mandal. He was shifted to a hospital.
http://www.deccan.com/home/homedetails.asp#Illegal immigrants prefer jail in UAE

Re: Those at the top and those at the bottom


Are they worth so little, Rama?
And are those CEOs worth so much?
Of course not!
This an obscene situation.
Huge businesses & corporations get away with this sort of outrageous inequality because the can, simple as that.

This may sound pie in the sky, extremely idealistic, naive and foolish thinking, but ...

... I predict that at some time in the future we will see the emergence to some form of global worker unity. A type of global trade unionism, if you like.

Because ... it will eventually become ubundantly clear to "workers in western democracies" (particularly the unskilled) that (as their standards of living continue fall & fall & fall) that their circumstances are really not all that much different to workers on the sub-continent, China, wherever this sort of exploitation is happening ... And that they are all being used by these huge businesses against each other.

Is that so far fetched? If big business can can so ruthlessly exploit global "opportunities", then it seems to me that a global workers' response is inevitable ... eventually.

If he engineers a sale of battered Countrywide Financial to Bank of America, Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo stands to walk away with a severance package worth more than $110 million, the Los Angeles Times' Kathy Kristof reports tonight.

Such a payout would come on top of huge gains Mozilo has made selling Countrywide stock during the mortgage crisis. As the mortgage industry went into a nose dive in late 2006 and 2007, Mozilo cashed out about $140 million in stock options, becoming one of the highest-paid executives in the country, the L.A. Times reported in November.

The newspaper reports tonight that in his contract agreement, which extended the 69-year-old's employment contract through 2009, Mozilo was guaranteed three times his base salary, plus a cash payment equal to three times the greater of his average bonus or the incentive bonus paid the previous year. Net value: $87.8 million.

In addition, Mozilo has two pensions that his severance agreement gives him the right to receive as a lump sum upon his departure. Those pensions were worth $24 million as of December 2006, the last time the company was required to report their value.

There is more. The Times reports Mozilo would receive continuing health benefits for life for himself and his spouse, three years of life and financial planning benefits, and "tax-gross-up payments" to compensate him for any penalties he'd have to pay for receiving payments the IRS might consider excessive.

Given the slashing of 10,900 jobs at Countrywide this year, and the 81% decline in Countrywide stock over the last year, it is likely Mozilo's severage package will prove more controversial than his previous stock sales.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laland/2008/01/mozilo-severanc.html

China’s billionaires, twenty in number, unlike India’s, are on average younger, have less advanced educational degrees, were almost all educated in China and only 10% inherited wealth. Sixty-five percent are fifty years or younger. Their total wealth is $29.8 billion dollars.
While most Indian billionaires inherited wealth and then built their fortune by using economic power to secure neo-liberal policies, in China almost all billionaires inherited and secured political influence through kinship ties as the basis for building their economic empire. The Chinese billionaires early on converted political ties to secure lucrative public enterprises, land, export subsidies, loans, import and export licenses, which facilitated the rapid accumulation of wealth.
China and India the ‘emerging world powers’ have in fact created a powerful political machine for manufacturing newly minted billionaires, blending new elites with old money and family networks. The ‘new class’ is the engine of monstrous class inequalities and high growth enclaves in the midst of a sea of misery. The prosperity and opulent wealth of the new metropolises , full of high-rise offices, luxurious apartments, and palatial mansions belies the vast poverty and yawning gap between the super-rich and the hundreds of millions,abused,scorned and feared. Today in China, discontent is widespread and fragmented: If and when the alienated masses come together, it might make the first ‘Cultural Revolution’ seem like a polite garden party.
The concentration and wealth of the Indian billionaires ($191 billion dollars) far exceeds the wealth of their Chinese counterparts ($28.9 billion dollars). In fact the total wealth of the top two Indian billionaires is $52.1 billion dollars, almost double that of all 20 Chinese billionaires together. The world’s greatest inequalities are found in India where the wealth of 35 billionaire families exceeds that of 800 million poor peasants, landless rural workers and urban slum dwellers.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the majority of Indian billionaires are not young, high tech, innovative, competitive billionaires. Over seventy percent are over fifty years old, one third do not have a university degree, less than one fifth have Masters degrees and fifty-seven percent inherited a substantial part of their fortune. The great majority of Indian billionaires started as millionaires — as part of the privileged upper class — and parlayed their long-standing family and political connections toward maximizing their profits. Over half (54%) of India’s billionaires accumulated their initial tens of millions through their monopoly positions in manufacturing, mining and construction and then took advantage of the liberalization, de-regulation and privatization policies of the Congress and BJP ruling parties to construct their billion-dollar empires.

While all of the billionaires are Indian citizens and claim primary residency in India, almost 90% of them have primary or secondary residency abroad in Australia, other Asian countries or the United Kingdom. While their initial wealth was derived from inheritance, manufacturing and services, almost one-third have reaped windfall profits from real estate speculation (shopping malls, special economic zones and residential housing) which has been fueled by high level and extensive corruption of top officials and the forcible removal of villagers and the urban slum dwellers.

While many Indian publicists and economists hail the ‘Indian miracle’ and classify India as an ‘emerging world power” because of the high growth rates of the past 5 years, what really has transpired is the conversion of India into a billionaire’s paradise. The in the price of land and real estate speculation has led to forced relocations of villagers to make way for new economic zones, where industrialists re-locate to avoid taxes, labor and social legislation while real estate speculators reap windfall profits. The growth of relative and absolute poverty, and declining living standards are masked by academics relying on absurdly low bench-marks of poverty — $2 dollars a day (World Bank Year Book, Washington 2006). In fact given the decline of public services and the de facto privatization of health and education, the rise in rents, regressive taxation, the re-conversion of land use, the lowering of trade and investment barriers — the very factors that have converted the privileged Indian millionaires in billionaires — 800 million Indian workers, peasants and the underemployed have seen a decline of their relative and absolute living standards .
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/06/chinas-billonaires/

barbarism
is the cuture.
Rama

Re: Those at the top and those at the bottom


Hahaha, eat it! I beat the Canadian average by five grand, in more valuable dollars plus the health coverage you love so much, my first year out of college. U! S! A!

But seriously, 218 times the national average? Wasn't Alexander the Great worth more than all his contemporaries put together? How many lives did each of the physicists of the Manhattan Project save for their side when they invented the atomic bomb? The key aspect of human nature is individuality, which implies that just one can excel in ways undreamed of. What kind of economy, even loosely related to merit would ignore that?

hanno
Thank you for your views. I wish to expose my ignorance thro this thread.
That means i admit that I am not tolerant intellectual like Mahathma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela or MLK.
Here is a cut and paste from a country's conservative daily which speaks volume of the modern culture.

"In India, over 2.1 million children die annually before reaching their fifth birthday, 50% of them not
surviving even 28 days. Globally, the number stands at 9.7 million annually.

The statistics are equally shocking among neonates - children newborn to a maximum age of 28 days old. While around 4 million children die within the first 28 days of life across the planet every year, India records around one million of these cases.

Of the 19 million infants in the developing world who have low birth weight (less than 2,500 grams), 8.3 million are in India. This means that approximately 43% of all the world's infants who are born with a low birth weight are born in India.

Malnutrition continues to affect newborns and young children and has been found to be the underlying cause of up to 50% of under-five deaths.

About 55 million, or one-third of the world's underweight children under age five, live in India with the worst affected states being Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Gujarat, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Meghalaya.

These are the findings of UNICEF's latest 'The State of the World's Children-2008' report released on Tuesday.

The report places India at number one spot in children's deaths across the globe - one child dying every three seconds.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Every_3_seconds_one_child_dies_in_India_UNICEF/rssarticleshow/2722552.cms
No child left behind?

India's five richest lose over $45 bn in 7-day meltdown


The losses are related to the five groups headed by Mukesh Ambani, Anil Ambani, KP Singh, Azim Premji and Sunil Mittal. Their companies have lost almost 90 billion dollars (Rs 3,36,000 crores) in this period.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/001200801222036.htm
work hard and manipulate not is the best advice .