Comment by Riaz Haq on March 17, 2016 at 8:16am

#Denmark happiest, #Burundi unhappiest among 156 nations. #Pakistan 92, #India 118. #WorldHappinessReport http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/world/europe/denmark-world-happin... …

Denmark topped the list in the first report, in 2012, and again in 2013, but it was displaced by Switzerland last year. In this year’s ranking, Denmark was back at No. 1, followed by Iceland, Norway, Finland, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia and Sweden. Most are fairly homogeneous nations with strong social safety nets.

At the bottom of the list of more than 150 countries was Burundi, where a violent political crisis broke out last year. Burundi was preceded by Syria, Togo, Afghanistan, Benin, Rwanda, Guinea, Liberia, Tanzania and Madagascar. All of those nations are poor, and many have been destabilized by war, disease or both.

Of the world’s most populous nations, China came in at No. 83, India at No. 118, the United States at No. 13, Indonesia at No. 79, Brazil at No. 17, Pakistan at No. 92, Nigeria at No. 103, Bangladesh at No. 110, Russia at No. 56, Japan at No. 53 and Mexico at No. 21. The United States rose two spots, from No. 15 in 2015.

From 2005 to 2015, Greece saw the largest drop in happiness of any country, a reflection of the economic crisis that began there in 2007.

The happiness ranking was based on individual responses to a global poll conducted by Gallup. The poll included a question, known as the Cantril Ladder: “Please imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?”

The scholars found that three-quarters of the variation across countries could be explained by six variables: gross domestic product per capita (the rawest measure of a nation’s wealth); healthy years of life expectancy; social support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble); trust (as measured by perceived absence of corruption in government and business); perceived freedom to make life choices; and generosity (as measured by donations).

The report was prepared by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, an international panel of social scientists that includes economists, psychologists and public health experts convened by the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon.

Though the findings do not represent the formal views of the United Nations, the network is closely tied to the Sustainable Development Goals, which the organization adopted in September, aiming, among other things, to end poverty and hunger by 2030, while saving the planet from the most destructive effects of climate change.

The field of happiness research has grown in recent years, but there is significant disagreement about how to measure happiness. Some scholars find people’s subjective assessments of their well-being to be unreliable, and they prefer objective indicators like economic and health data. The scholars behind the World Happiness Report said they tried to take both types of data into account.

In a chapter of the report on the distribution of happiness around the world, three economists — John F. Helliwell, of the University of British Columbia; Haifang Huang of the University of Alberta; and Shun Wang of the Korea Development Institute — argued against a widely held view that changes in people’s assessments of their lives are largely transitory. Under this view, people have a baseline level of contentment and rapidly adapt to changing circumstances.

The three economists noted research showing that people’s evaluations of their lives “differ significantly and systematically among countries”; that within countries, subgroups differ widely in their levels of happiness; that unemployment and major disabilities have lasting influences on well-being; and that the happiness of migrants approximates that of their new country, instead of their country of origin.

Comment by Riaz Haq on March 24, 2016 at 9:34am

The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index: Rising Poverty and Social Inequality in India

In South Asia, Afghanistan has the highest level of destitution at 38%. This is followed by India at 28.5%. Bangladesh and Pakistan have much lower levels. The study placed Afghanistan as the poorest country in South Asia, followed by India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal.

India had the second-best social indicators among the six South Asian countries (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan) 20 years ago. Now it has the second worst position, ahead only of Pakistan. Bangladesh has less than half of India’s per-capita GDP but has infant and child mortality rates lower than that of India.

Writing this week in India’s Deccan Herald, Prasenjit Chowdhury notes that according to two comparable surveys conducted in Bangladesh and India in 2006, in Bangladesh, 82% of children are fully immunised, 88% get vitamin A supplements and 89% are breastfed within an hour of birth. The corresponding figures for Indian children are below 50 per cent in all case and as low as 25%t for vitamin A supplementation.

Moreover, over half of the population in India practices open defecation, a major health hazard, compared with less than 10% in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has overtaken India in terms of a wide range of basic social indicators, including life expectancy, child survival, enhanced immunisation rates, reduced fertility rates and particular schooling indicators.

What has gone wrong?

In recent times, India has experienced much publicised high levels of GDP growth. So what is going wrong? Amartya Sen and the World Bank’s chief economist Kaushik Basu have argued that the bulk of India’s aggregate growth is occurring through a disproportionate rise in the incomes at the upper end of the income ladder. To use Arundhati Roy’s term, the poor in India are the ‘ghosts of capitalism’: the ‘invisible’ and shoved-aside victims of a now rampant neoliberalism.

The ratio between the top and bottom 10% of wage distribution has doubled since the early 1990s, when India opened up it economy. According to the 2011 Organisation for Cooperation and Economic Development report ‘Divided we stand’, this has made India one of the worst performers in the category of emerging economies. The poverty alleviation rate is no higher than it was 25 years ago. Up to 300,000 farmers have committed suicide since 1997 due to economic distress and many more have quit farming.

Assets such as airports, seeds, ports and other infrastructure built up with public money or toil have been sold off into private hands.

Secretive Memorandums of Understanding have been signed between the government and resource extraction-related industries, which has led to 300,000 of the nation’s poorest people being driven from their lands in tribal areas and around 50,000 placed into ‘camps’. As a result, naxalites and insurgents are in violent conflict with the state across many of these areas.

Where have the benefits been accrued from the 8-9% year on year GDP growth in recent times?

Sit down and read the statistics. Then step outside and see the islands of wealth and privilege surrounded by the types of poverty and social deprivations catalogued by the MPI.

Global Finance Integrity has shown that the outflow of illicit funds into foreign bank accounts has accelerated since opening up the economy to neoliberalism in the early nineties. ‘High net worth individuals’ (ie the very rich) are the biggest culprits here. Crony capitalism and massive scams have become the norm. It is not too hard to see what is going wrong.

India’s social development has been sacrificed on the altar of greed and corruption for bulging Swiss accounts, and it has been stolen and put in the pockets of the country’s ruling class ‘wealth creators’ and the multinational vultures who long ago stopped circling and are now swooping.


http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-global-multidimensional-poverty-in...

Comment by Riaz Haq on March 31, 2016 at 4:06pm

BBC News - #India #Kolkata flyover collapse: At least 20 dead, many buried in rubble. Rescuers using bare hands. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35933452 …

A flyover under construction in the Indian city of Kolkata (Calcutta) has collapsed, killing at least 20 people and injuring nearly 100.
More are feared trapped under the concrete and steel bridge, and rescue efforts are continuing all night.
Images show residents using their bare hands to help find victims.
Safety issues such as lack of inspections and the use of substandard materials have plagued construction projects in the country.
The accident took place in an area near Girish Park, one of Kolkata's most densely populated neighbourhoods, with narrow lanes, and shops and houses built close together.
The 2km-long (1.2 mile) flyover had been under construction since 2009 and missed several deadlines for completion.
The causes of the disaster were not immediately clear but the company in charge of the construction, IVRCL, said it would cooperate with investigators.

Comment by Riaz Haq on April 9, 2016 at 10:20am

#Poverty Tour: #India's slum-dwellers to meet #WilliamAndKate in #Ambedkar Nagar. #Mumbai | via @telegraphnews http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/09/how-the-other-half-live-why-indias-slum-dwellers-are-keen-to-mee/ …

Today will be a case in point: after the couple land in Mumbai they will go straight to their first engagement, laying a wreath to the victims of the 2008 terrorist attack on the Taj Palace Hotel, then move on to a slum to see the work of three children’s charities, before rounding off the day with a charity gala dinner to raise money for the same charities, where celebrity guests will include the “Queen of Bollywood”, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, and cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar.
Their slum visit this morning will transport them to a world which could barely be more different from the Duke and Duchess’s palatial home life.

Anmer Hall, the Duke and Duchess’s home in Norfolk, could comfortably be divided into more than 100 typical dwellings in the Baba Sheb Ambedkar Nagar slum, where Saniya lives, meaning the Grade II* listed property would be home to upwards of 500 people, rather than four. They also have a London home at Kensington Palace.

A crude comparison, perhaps, but one which has clearly crossed the minds of Saniya and other pupils at the slum’s Door Step school. Many of them start work at the age of seven gutting fish or scavenging rubbish dumps for £3 a day and drop in to the school in the evenings to learn how to read and write.

The school’s founder, Bina Sheth Lashkari, said: “We have shown the children pictures of the Duke and Duchess and where they live. The children know they are going to meet a Prince and Princess and they have asked if they are like the Princes and Princesses in fairy tales. One of the girls asked if the Princess had big hair, like Rapunzel.


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In 33C heat they will have to pick their way through the stray cats and dogs foraging scraps of food, avoid the opaque brown puddles in the beaten earth paths and the jumble of electrical wires at head height, before being shown into one of the shockingly tiny homes, smaller than a walk-in wardrobe.

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