BIG HIKES IN RURAL, SOCIAL SPENDING IN INDIA’S NEW BUDGET

[He was, nonetheless, upbeat. “I acknowledge that the Indian economy is challenged, but I am absolutely confident that, with your cooperation, we will get out of the trough and get on to the high growth path,” he said, before presenting the budget in a speech that lasted nearly two hours. “There is no reason for gloom or pessimism,” he said. “Even now, of the large countries of the world, only China and Indonesia are growing faster than India in 2012-13.”]

By The New York Times

Harish Tyagi/European Pressphoto Agency

Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram leaving his office for the 

Parliament House, to deliver the Budget 2013-14, on Thursday.

Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram presented the Union budget in Parliament on Thursday morning. When Mr. Chidambaram walked into the Lok Sabha, or lower house of Parliament, carrying the ceremonialbudget briefcase, it was eighth time he had presented the country’s annual budget, and the 82^nd national budget presented in India.

As the last Union Budget to be presented before the national elections in 2014, the finance minister faced a difficult task of balancing good politics with good economics, particularly in trying to rein in a record-high national deficit.

He was, nonetheless, upbeat. “I acknowledge that the Indian economy is challenged, but I am absolutely confident that, with your cooperation, we will get out of the trough and get on to the high growth path,” he said, before presenting the budget in a speech that lasted nearly two hours. “There is no reason for gloom or pessimism,” he said. “Even now, of the large countries of the world, only China and Indonesia are growing faster than India in 2012-13.”

Here is a brief overview of the Union Budget for the fiscal year that begins April 1, 2013:

Total Expenditure:

Planned expenditure in 2013-2014 is 5.55 trillion rupees, or $103 billion, up 29.4 percent from revised estimates for the year before. Total expenditure for 2013-2014 will be 16.7 trillion rupees, up 16 percent from the total expenditure in the fiscal year 2012-2013 of 14.3 trillion rupees.

Full year economic growth projections for the year beginning April 1, 2013:

Gross domestic product growth for 2013-2014 will be 6.1 to 6.7 percent, up from 5 percent the year before. In a budget that emphasized growth, Mr. Chidambaram said that his aim was to get back to an 8 percent growth rate. “Our mantra is, higher growth leading to inclusive and sustainable development,” he said.

Fiscal Deficit:

The fiscal deficit for the current year was contained at 5.2 percent, Mr. Chidambaram said. For the fiscal year 2013-2014, which begins April 1, the estimated fiscal deficit is 4.8 percent and the revenue deficit is 3.3 percent. By 2016-2017, the finance minister said, he aimed to bring down fiscal deficit to 3 percent and revenue deficit to 1.5 percent

Trade:

Exports fell 5.5 percent in the 2012-2013 fiscal year to $ 214.1 billion, compared to their 21.3 percent growth in fiscal 2011-12, when they reached $226.5 billion.

Imports fell 0.7 percent percent in the 2012-2013 fiscal year to $361.3 billion, down from $ 363.9 billion in the corresponding period of 2011-12.

Current Account Deficit

The current account deficit, a measure of the difference between the value of exports and imports, is caused by high oil, coal and gold imports and a slowdown in exports, the finance minister said. This figure is a “greater worry” than the fiscal deficit, he said. In the first half of the fiscal year 2012-2013, the latest figures available, the current account deficit worsened to $39 billion, or 4.6 percent of G.D.P, versus $36.4 billion, or 4 percent, in the corresponding period of 2011-12.

In order to finance the current account deficit, foreign investment must be increased. Over the next two years, $75 billion is needed to finance the current account deficit, Mr. Chidambaram said.

Rural Spending

The budget for the Ministry of Rural Development will rise by a staggering 46 percent, to 802 billion rupees, or $14.9 billion.

Agriculture Spending:

The Union budget 2013-2014 allocated 270 billion rupees, or $5.02 billion to the Agriculture Ministry, an increase of 22 percent from the previous budget.

Food Security:

The National Food Security Bill, which will provide subsidized food to poor people, is a “promise” of the United Progressive Alliance government, the finance minister said, and he hopes that the Parliament will pass the bill soon. The budget has set aside 100 billion rupees ($1.86 billion) for costs likely under the food security bill, he said.

Health and Education

“Health for all and education for all remain our priorities,” Mr. Chidambaram said. In 2013-2014 he allocated 373 billion rupees, or $6.93 billion to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. This includes 212 million rupees for the National Health Mission, a program to improve healthcare in rural India, an increase of 24.3 percent from the year before.

He also proposed to provide rupees 47 billion rupees, or $878 million for medical education, training and research.

Defense Spending:

Allocations for defense in the upcoming year rose by 4.5 percent from the year before, to 2 lakh crore, or 2 trillion rupees. In 2012-2013 fiscal year, defense spending allocation was 1.94 trillion rupees ($38.7 billion), up 17.6 percent over the year before.

Taxes: Tax rates will remain the same, the finance minister said, but there will be a one-time surcharge imposed on the 42,800 Indians who report income of more than 10 million rupees ($186,000) to the tax department. This will be imposed for one year only, he said, adding that he hoped these rich Indians would feel a little of the spirit of Azim Premji, the Wipro founder and philanthropist.

@ The New York Times

OUTRAGE IN SOUTH AFRICA AFTER POLICE DRAG MAN BEHIND TRUCK AND HE DIES

[In South Africa, where violent crime, vigilante attacks and police brutality are daily fare, the video, captured on a mobile phone and first published by The Daily Sun, a local tabloid, has incited outrage for its brazen and outsize cruelty.]

By Lydia Polgreen

JOHANNESBUG — The footage is shaky but unmistakable. A slender black man dressed in a red T-shirt, black pants and sneakers is tied to the back of a police truck. He kicks. He writhes. The vehicle pulls away, dragging the man behind it. Police officers run along with him. Cellphone cameras snap away.

“What did he do?” bystanders shouted.

“It was him who started it,” a police officer replied.

Late Tuesday night, the man, who has since been identified as Mido Macia, 27, a taxi driver from Mozambique, died of head injuries at the Daveyton Police Station, 27 miles southeast of here.

In South Africa, where violent crime, vigilante attacks and police brutality are daily fare, the video, captured on a mobile phone and first published by The Daily Sun, a local tabloid, has incited outrage for its brazen and outsize cruelty.

“We come across a lot of cases of police brutality,” said Moses Dlamini of the Independent Investigative Directorate, which investigates police crimes, in a television interview. “The police don’t even care that people are watching.”

For many, the video was a reminder of the harsh treatment meted out to black citizens by white policemen under apartheid, when South Africa’s police force was notorious for its harsh tactics against the country’s black majority.

“If this was apartheid Police we’d riot,” wrote Zackie Achmat, a prominent social activist, on Twitter.

Back then, the officers were likely to be white and at the command of a racial dictatorship. Now they are almost entirely black, serving a democratically elected government.

Under apartheid, more than 70 percent of police stations were in white areas despite the fact that whites were less than 20 percent of the country’s population. The job of the white-led police was clearly to protect whites from blacks, said Gareth Newham, an analyst at the Institute for Security Studies and an expert on policing in South Africa.

After 1994, when apartheid ended and the African National Congress was voted into power in the country’s first fully democratic elections, reforming the police force was a top priority. Millions of dollars were spent on cashing out apartheid-era officials and recruiting new members to the force. Its emphasis was supposed to shift from controlling black South Africans to serving them.

But a fierce crime wave washed over South Africa in the years after apartheid. Violent crime increased by 22 percent. Murder, carjackings and armed robberies were endemic. South Africa’s reputation suffered.

The government, under intense pressure to clamp down on crime, enacted tough new policies. Huge recruitment drives added 70,000 new officers and administrators to the force.

“You have thousands of people coming in, so the standard for recruitment dropped,” Mr. Newham said. “Training dropped from two years to one. You can’t do proper vetting.”

Supervisors found they were responsible for twice as many officers, many of them inexperienced and poorly trained. Discipline suffered.

Meanwhile the national political debate around crime became more heated. In 2008, the deputy police minister, Susan Shabangu, exhorted the police to use maximum force in a speech at an anti-crime rally in the capital, Pretoria, telling them, “they have permission to kill these criminals.”

Her remarks courted controversy, but they were widely praised.

“I want no warning shots,” she said. “You have one shot and it must be a kill shot. If you miss, the criminals will go for the kill. They don’t miss. We can’t take this chance.”

She went on: “The Constitution says criminals must be kept safe, but I say No! I say we must protect the law-abiding people and not the criminals. I say that criminals must be made to pay for their crimes.”

Unsurprisingly, the number of people killed by the police skyrocketed. In 2005-2006, police shot 281 people dead. Within three years the number doubled.

The message went down through the ranks.

“You are expected to be tough, you decide who the criminals are, and you will not be held accountable,” Mr. Newham said.

The past year has been a tough one for South Africa’s troubled police force. In August 2012, officers opened fire on platinum miners engaged in a wildcat strike in the town of Marikana, killing 34 of them in the biggest mass shooting since the end of apartheid.

The force suffered further embarrassment when one of its detectives, Warrant Officer Hilton Botha, bungled his testimony on the stand at the bail hearing for Oscar Pistorius, a track star who is charged with murdering his girlfriend, conceding several major errors. Officer Botha was removed from the case after it was revealed that he himself faces attempted murder charges.

Police officials promised a swift investigation. A press officer for Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega said that “the matter is viewed by the national commissioner in a very serious light and it is strongly condemned.”

And police brutality videos have surfaced in the past, an emblem of an era in which cellphones mean that almost everyone carries a video recorder in their pocket and digital material can be shared rapidly through social media networks. A 2011 episode in Vaalwater, a town in Limpopo Province, was also captured on a cellphone video, showing a police officer repeatedly kicking a man who appeared to be bloody and unconscious. In that case, the crowd seems to be egging on the officer.

“Hit him, but don’t kill him,” one bystander shouts.

“Someone is really getting the boot,” another says, chuckling.

A lonely female voice uttered, “look at what is happening to God’s children.”

In the case of the dragged man, though, few of the bystanders appeared to support the police. A crowd of angry protesters gathered at the Daveyton Police Station on Thursday, demanding that the officers be prosecuted.

“They killed one of our brothers like he was a dog,” said one woman, speaking to a reporter of ENCA, a local news channel. 

@ The New York Times