Bharat Ratna for Amartya Sen

Nobel prize winner Amartya Sen has been selected for the country's highest civilian award, Bharat Ratna, a Rashtrapati Bhavan communiqué said. This decision was taken by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee who then took the recommendation to President K.R. Narayanan.

Prof. Sen, 64, will be the 36th recipient of the award, joining a galaxy of eminent personalities including C. Rajgopalachari, C.V. Raman, S. Radhakrishnan, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhai Patel, B.R. Ambedkar, Indira Gandhi, Satyajit Ray, Mother Teresa, Morarjee Desai, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Nelson Mandela and Jayprakash Narayan.

A Master of Trinity College at Cambridge University, Dr. Sen was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for Economics. He was honoured for his work on welfare economics. He is credited with redefining economics and taking it out of the confines of dry statistics. He shot into limelight with his seminal work on the 1942 Bengal famine. His subsequent analysis of famines in Africa and Saharan countries confirmed his belief that famines were not always caused by food shortages.

Honouring Dr. Sen with Bharat Ratna at this juncture is significant because he has always viewed India as a multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual society.

During his recent visit to India, the Nobel laureate championed the causes of transparency and literacy as key to removing mass poverty in the country.

Revenue Secretary rules out a dream budget

Revenue secretary Javed Chaudhury said that in the coming budget the government would assume a lower buoyancy in revenue collections and increase customs duties to give protection to the Indian industry.

“The buoyancy in revenue collections for the next year, to be assumed in the budget, would have to be significantly lower than the assumption in the 1998-99 budget of a 20 per cent increase,” he told a conference of corporate managers and tax executives at FICCI. He said the budget would be “conscientious and workmanlike” instead of a “flamboyant” one in view of the sluggish domestic growth and threat from the international crisis.

The revenue secretary said the government would be fully satisfied if the budget was received as a conscientious and workmanlike one, rather than a dream budget. “Dream budgets, as we know, have a disconcerting way of turning into nightmares,” he added. Mr. Chowdhury also mentioned that the fiscal deficit in the current fiscal would marginally exceed the budget target of 5.6 per cent of the GDP. But he maintained that it would be significantly lower than the “doomsday” figure of seven per cent as suggested by various commentators. He said that the expectation of a collection of over Rs. 2,000 crore from Kar Vivad Samadhan scheme would also help in containing the fiscal deficit.
On the issue of protection to the domestic industry, he said the pace of lowering of duties — even in excess of WTO requirement — should not create a situation where relatively efficient sectors of the Indian economy are also endangered.

“The logic of liberalisation does require that irretrievably inefficient sectors of the economy should be allowed to waste away, but this is not so for currently viable sectors, which are threatened
by the South East Asian and CIS economies. This aspect would also receive the attention of the government”, he said.

There were some indications that the decline in growth of many sectors like medium and heavy commercial vehicles, steel and petro-chemicals, had bottomed out, he said. He indicated some of the tax exemptions granted earlier would be removed. “Despite the sharp reduction of tax rates over the years, instead of reducing, the number of exemptions have been alarmingly raised. This trend would necessarily have to be reversed,” he added.

Call for narrowing regional gap

The 20th Indian Geography Congress, which was concluded in Gorakhpur recently, has recommended narrowing of regional disparities and accelerating the pace of development in backward areas to achieve balanced growth rate in the country.

Known as "the Gorakhpur Declaration", the recommendations underlined the need for a comprehensive perspective as a basic framework for all-round development.

According to the declaration, the national economic growth could not resolve problems of underdeveloped or stagnating regions. For achieving spatial equity in development across the regions, some form of special intervention in the functioning of market economy through scientific public policy is required.

The declaration says that the nature of backward areas and the potential for dealing with them vary greatly. They depend on the natural and human resources of the areas and various social and cultural factors which may promote or retard development along modern lines. It is therefore necessary to delineate a number of alternatives in designing appropriate strategy to overcome the constraints in backward areas. It suggested that in the areas affected by deforestation and degradation of land, priority should be accorded to conserving productive farms as well as devising water-harvesting measures and reclaiming degraded and waste land through agro-forestry, soil amelioration, drainage and other appropriate techniques.

The declaration also emphasised the need to set up a separate integrated technology mission for sustainable development of backward areas under the department of space. This would not only bring potentials and problems of the areas but also help prepare a master plan for scientific regional development with the active collaboration of regional development boards and local authorities.

It recommended that at least some of the backward areas in the country be declared special economic and technological zones where foreign investment be directed. Such a system of directed foreign investment has been adopted in China and this has led to a step-by-step open door development paving the way for infrastructure development and consequently to industrialization of backward areas.

Japan Expands ambit of sanctions on India

In an apparent stiffening of its position, Japan has sought to include ongoing projects in India in the ambit of economic sanctions and said further funding of these projects will be considered only 'on case by case basis'.

Responding to the Indian plea to 'positively consider' the financing needs of the ongoing projects during foreign secretary level talks between the two countries, Japanese foreign ministry spokesman ruled out immediate easing of sanctions and said continuation of financial assistance as well as resumption of regular aid programme must not be taken for granted any more. The aids to New Delhi would be considered 'on a case by case basis', he added briefing reporters on the outcome of foreign secretary K. Raghunath's discussions with the Japanese side.

Japanese officials said the shift in stance was due to satisfy public opinion which demanded 'some positive developments on the Indian side concerning nuclear non-proliferation issues.'While imposing economic embargo on India following the nuclear tests in May last year, Japan had categorically stated that the sanctions were against new aid but not against any ongoing projects.