Nepalese residents buy fresh produce at a vegetable market early morning in Kathmandu, Nepal, Wednesday, April 29, 2015. While many villages across Nepal affected by Saturday’s earthquake are still waiting for rescue and relief teams, life in the capital, Kathmandu, is slowly returning to normal.
Nepalese residents buy fresh produce at a vegetable market early...
In this photo by Bernat Amangue, Nepalese residents buy fresh produce at a vegetable market in Kathmandu that reopened after Saturday's earthquake. Before first light Wednesday morning, truckloads of fresh produce were unloaded and customers began to arrive at the "kalimati bazaar." While many outlying villages are still waiting for rescue and relief teams, the nation's capital was slowly returning to normal. Banks and ATMs were working, municipal workers were cleaning the streets and some people were returning home after sleeping out in the open for several nights. Most of the vegetable stalls that opened were those that escaped damage in the quake, but prices were much higher than usual.
The United Nations says it is beginning to distribute food and medicine Wednesday in the area near the epicenter of Saturday's earthquake in Nepal, where the death toll continues to rise.
The World Food Program's efforts around Gorkha come as Nepalese officials pledged that Wednesday would bring improvements in the government's response for those in need of food, water and shelter.
Meanwhile, search and rescue workers continued picking through rubble caused by the magnitude-7.8 quake. Late Tuesday, a French team pulled a man from his collapsed home in the capital, Kathmandu, where he had been trapped for more than 80 hours.
VOA's Steve Herman, who is in Nepal, said the first foreign rescue teams with sophisticated equipment reached the town of Sankhu, east of Kathmandu, on Wednesday, but that one member of a Chinese team told him it would be rare to find someone alive this long after the earthquake.
Herman said residents in Sankhu were getting food and water but told him they wished help had arrived sooner.
"We put this question to a police armed forces colonel, and he said he definitely empathized with the frustration being expressed by the locals that they had not seen anybody from the government, and they haven't gotten any food and aid earlier," Herman said, adding that Nepal's government "with its very limited resources in the best of times was doing its utmost to help the people here."
Officials said Wednesday the official death toll had climbed past 5,000 people.
The U.N. estimated the earthquake has affected 8 million people -- more than a quarter of the country's population -- with 1.4 million in need of food. The quake has left at least 10,000 people injured.
U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos is due to travel to Nepal on Thursday to assess aid operations.
With many people frustrated by what they say is a slow response by the government, thousands of people gathered in Kathmandu on Wednesday looking to board buses to leave the city and reach their families in outlying areas.
Nepalese Prime Minister Sushil Koirala pledged in a televised address Tuesday to rebuild historically, religiously and archaeologically significant structures and declared three days of mourning for the victims of the earthquake.
The International Committee of the Red Cross created a website for friends and family to report missing loved ones, or search for those who have checked in.
Rahul Gandhi, who boarded a train to Punjab to see how its farmers are faring, has clearly decided that the issue of farm distress will be his route to political relevance in the Modi era. After his “suit-boot ki Sarkar” jibe, which pitted poor farmers against rich industrialists, today he targeted Modi’s ‘Make in India’ campaign by saying this programme did not include “labourers and farmers."
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi. PTI
While political jousting is fine, at some point Rahul-baba's claims must be scrutinised in the bright light of facts and figures. Using anecdotal evidence on farmer suicides may help him position himself as a rural messiah to the gullible, but the actual numbers do not suggest that his suggested remedies - higher increases in minimum support prices (MSPs), debt waivers, and more bank credit to the farm sector - will fix the problem.
Gandhi also claimed that the UPA regime had made sharp increases in MSPs as against the anaemic ones given by the NDA after Modi came to power in May last year.
Given that the Modi regime still has four years to run, the second part of the allegation - that the NDA gave poor increases - need not be examined right now. It could change.
A close look at the numbers relating to MSP increases and farmer suicides shows no particular linkage between the two. Nor do the figures bear out Rahul Gandhi’s contention that the UPA was always more benevolent on MSP hikes. Pre-election years were the major exceptions to the rule of low MSP increases under UPA.
Table 2
In the first four years of UPA-1 (see table 2), MSP hikes remained low – ranging from 3.8 percent in 2004 to a pathetic 1.8 percent in the next three years. Since these were years of high growth and rising tax revenues, the UPA cannot even claim that it did not have the resources to subsidise farmers with high MSP increases.
Farmer suicides during these four years averaged a high 17,266 annually (see table 1).
Table 1
As elections neared, UPA boosted MSPs dramatically, setting the stage for high food inflation and a growth slowdown due to the unsustainable fiscal deficits of UPA-2. MSPs went up by an average of 18.3 percent between 2007-08 and 2009-10, but farmer suicides remained high at an average of 16,486 annually during those three high MSP years, which included one year – 2008 – in which Rs 72,000 crore of farm debt was also waived in a pre-election sop.
This shows that there may be no one-to-one link between loan waivers and foodgrain MSPs and trends in farmer suicides.
The big change in the suicide trend (downwards) began after 2009 – a year after the loan waivers were announced. The suicide rate began to fall year after year, hitting a low of 11,772 in calendar 2013. It is not clear if this secular trend has reversed in 2014 or not. Till that is clear, we can’t assume there has been any sustainable directional shift in the suicide rate among farmers.
However, there is another – stronger – correlation that may explain the fall in farmer suicides after 2010: strong rural wage growth, no doubt due to a bustling economy, strengthened by the NREGA scheme that guaranteed 100 days of employment for one member of any household every year. Rural wage growth went into double digits from 2008 and remained so till early 2014. But towards the end of 2014, wage growth tanked to 3.8 percent, well below the inflation rate.
It is more than likely that rural wage growth has strong linkages to general economic growth, which started tapering off after 2011-12. This drop in growth rate was due to over-spending through much of UPA-2, which necessitated a sharp cut in plan spending during the Pranab Mukherjee and P Chidambaram years. As the economy slowed, the rural sector and wage growth too slowed.
One can also surmise that the fall in farm suicide rates seen from 2010 to 2013 was the result of this strong wage trend and faster economic growth - to which higher MSPs would have added fuel. Once the election boost to MSPs wore off, the farm stimulus was no longer sustainable, and wage growth tapered off due the the general economic slowdown brought on by the need to contain the fiscal deficit. It remains to be seen if suicide rates have actually risen due to the wage growth slowdown in 2014 or not, though the drop in farm output due to a weak monsoon last year and the unseasonal rains and hailstorms this year may have made life difficult for farmers.
On the other hand, the drop in the rate of MSP increases would have been compensated partially by a sharp fall in food inflation – which should have made up for some of the rural wage growth slowdown.
Moreover, MSPs are given only for rice, wheat and a few pulses in food surplus states. This means the moderation in MSP hikes would have impacted farmers only in those states where the government procures most of its stocks. These are the five states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
But farmer suicides are a rarity in these states, and are more prevalent in Maharashtra and Telangana. According to data given out by the government last month in parliament, out of the 1,109 cases of agrarian distress-related farmer suicides in 2014, as many as 986 were from Maharashtra, 84 from Telangana and 29 from Jharkhand. (These figures vary from the higher suicide figures put out by the National Crime Records Bureau, from where the Table 2 figures are taken, because a farmer suicide can have other reasons than merely huge debt burden or crop failures. In fact, most farmer suicides do not relate to farm distress).
What this shows is that farmer suicides have little to do MSPs themselves and that they may afflict some states more than the rest.If rural/farmer suicides have indeed risen now, it could be more related to the wage slowdown resulting from the economic decline under UPA-2.
A study by Jonathan Kennedy and Lawrence King suggests that suicides correlate more to farmers producing cash crops (cotton, cane), and especially those with marginal land holdings and high debts.
This would suggest that loan waivers would help, but the solution may be to provide price support to cash crops and reducing the number of farmers holding marginal acreage. Anecdotally, we know that Vidarbha - the suicide capital of India - depends on cotton farming, and many suicides relate to this crop.
A reduction in suicide rate may thus be achieved by getting farmers to sell land for a good price, and giving them support and skills to pursue new careers, so that the remaining farmers can invest in larger pieces of land and improve productivity and profits. A small amount of price support to cash crops in bad years may also help.
The solutions to the problem of suicide are thus localised and specific. The more generalised approach should be to reduce the number of farmers with uneconomic land holdings, investing in re-skilling them, investing in infrastructure and factories to provide them jobs, and giving farmers annuities based on the land they are willing to sell, or are forced to sell when their land is acquired for public purposes.
Writing off debts can help marginally, but this comes at the cost of making our banks sick instead, as it worsens the repayment culture in rural areas. Moreover, the real issue is indebtedness to private moneylenders, and no loan waiver can help marginal farmers with private debts. So even loan waivers have limited utility.
Rahul Gandhi’s solutions are largely hokum. But the lesson for Narendra Modi is to take the high road and present his land acquisition law differently. It has to be a political pitch showing how farmers can earn more by parting with their land for a profitable price than by holding on to it to earn low incomes from sub-optimal farm productivity.
Sunil Narine's return from a bowling ban didn't last too long. The spinner, who made his comeback to cricket with Indian Premier League (IPL) side Kolkata Knight Riders, has now been banned from bowling offspinners after being reported for suspect action on 22 April.
Narine, who has played five times for KKR this season, made a return to competitive cricket with a new action and hasn't been very successful either — picking up two wickets at an average of 73.50.
Sunil Narine in action for KKR. BCCI
Narine was praised by players and the media alike for retaining his 'mystery' despite the change in action — but the officials spotted something awry in the match against Sunrisers Hyderabad.
The subsequent verdict is: "Pursuant to this report, Mr. Narine visited the Sri Ramachandra Arthroscopy and Sports Sciences Centre (SRASSC) in Chennai for a biomechanical analysis of his bowling action. The BCCI Suspect Bowling Action Committee has reviewed the evidence of the match footage and the analysis provided by SRASSC. Following the provisions of the IPL Suspected Illegal Bowling Action Policy, the committee has concluded that Mr. Narine’s bowling action for his off-spinner, contravenes Law 24.2 (as read with Law 24.3) of the Laws of Cricket and therefore the player is now banned from bowling the off-spinner in matches organised by the BCCI, including the IPL. He may however continue to bowl his other deliveries (the knuckle ball and the quicker straight ball)," said a BCCI statement.
Narine wasn't picked for KKR's sixth match and it remains to be seen whether he plays again for the defending champions. If Narine bowls the offspinner again this season, then the on-field umpires would apply Law 24.2 and call no ball and, at the end of the match, would issue a further report.
"Pursuant to clause 3.4 of the IPL Suspected Illegal Bowling Action Policy, the player would in such circumstances automatically be suspended from bowling in BCCI-organised matches," the statement added.
Narine may undergo a course of bowling rehabilitation and take corrective measures to ensure that his action does not contravene Law 24 and may then request a further official assessment by the committee.
With this win against Kolkata Knight Riders, Chennai Super Kings are on the top of IPL 2015 Points Table. By defending a target of just 135 runs, CSK proved that team effort can turn impossible into possible. Even KKR owner, Shah Rukh Khan, praised the yellow team tweeting, "CSK played like the champs they are. Extremely deserving victors. We need to believe, play harder. Insha Allah. Nikal gayi Chennai Express…" Here's what happened during the match... - Amann Khuranaa
Cricket never gets boring for Indians and when it does, there comes the Indian Premier League to give the Indian cricket fans their dose of entertainment. The nail-biting match between Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders was not just high on entertainment, but it was also one of those matches where losers were not really losers. It was just that the winners were a little better. In a match where the Riders restricted the Super Kings to a total of 134 and still lost it, was indeed every bit riveting. Here's how... - Amann Khuranaa
Kolkata Knight Riders were in full swing as they bowled Chennai Super Kings out at a moderate score of 134. By the end of first innings, the match seemed completely in the hands of the visitors, but as soon as they came in to bat, some tight bowling by the hosts backed up with superb fielding made it difficult for KKR to chase a target what seemed like a cakewalk in the beginning. Even though CSK failed to put up a strong target, they were after all, playing on home ground. Their power started showing results in the very first over when KKR captain Gautam Gambhir was sent back to the pavilion for a golden duck. However, it was Robin Uthappa, who without losing his confidence, kept doing his job scoring 39 runs off 17 balls.
Read on to know how the match turned around... - Amann Khuranaa
As KKR seemed to be easily inching towards the target, Captain Cool MS Dhoni brought in R Ashwin. Little did Uthappa know that Ashwin's first ball would get him out. Uthappa gave an easy catch to McCullum putting KKR back in trouble. Manish Pandey's wicket made things even more difficult for KKR and the match now seemed to be going away from them. At a score of 61 for three, Yousuf Pathan came in, who bent his knees in front of CSK's fielding efforts. Yousuf managed to score 13 runs off 18 balls.
Read on to know how a smashing inning kept CSK in the game... - Amann Khuranaa
Hard-hitter Andre Russell tried his best to bring KKR back in the game, but soon lost his wicket to an unfortunate run out. With 17 runs needed from the last over, Kolkata Knight Riders seemed to be in no position to be winning, but Ryan ten Doeschate’s brilliant efforts did increase the heartrate of the hosts. After playing three dot balls, Ryan hit one six and two fours in the last three balls of the match. Had he hit a six on the last ball, the match would have tied. Nevertheless, the boy did win some hearts. - Amann Khuranaa
A bid from Australia would enjoy a lot of sympathy and would have a very good chance of winning to follow the success of the Melbourne Games in 1956 and Sydney in 2000, says Olympic chief Thomas Bach.
International Olympic Committee chief Thomas Bach File Photo
A bid from Australia to host the Summer Olympics for the third time in 2028 would have a good chance of winning what he hoped would be a hotly-contested bidding process, Olympic chief Thomas Bach said on Wednesday.
The Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) earlier this month offered its backing to a prospective bid for the 2028 Olympics by a group of mayors from southeast Queensland, centred on the city of Brisbane.
Bach said he had met Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott earlier on Wednesday and discussed a future Games in Australia to follow the success of the Melbourne Games in 1956 and Sydney in 2000.
"A bid from Australia would enjoy a lot of sympathy and would have a very good chance of winning," the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) told a news conference in Sydney.
"This is for 2028, so it's a little bit premature to talk already. I also told the Prime Minister, I would do whatever I can (to make sure) Australia would not be alone in this race. They would enjoy a great competition. Because this is what Australians usually love, a great competition and then to win, maybe," the President of IOC added.
The German said Australia's great contribution to the Olympic movement through sports administrators and the country's famous love of sport would make a bid attractive and added that it would not be too soon for a return to the country.
"It would be 28 years after the Sydney Games, this is not too soon to come back to Australia and Oceania, the Games are rotating around the world but there is no established rotation by the years. It would be wise for the Australians to be candidates for the Olympic Games while there are people who are still alive to remember the great success of the Sydney Games." he said.
Only Greece, Britain and the United States have hosted the Summer Games more than twice.
The Olympics will be held in Brazil for the first time next year, while Tokyo will host the Summer Games for the second time in 2020. Queensland will host the Commonwealth Games for the second time when the seaside resort city of Gold Coast welcomes the multi-sports Games for mainly former British colonies in 2018.
There are reports that the BCCI's SGM will be called on May 24, the day of IPL final
The BCCI's new regime under Jagmohan Dalmiya's leadership is exploring the option of an early Special General Meeting (SGM) in its bid to oust N Srinivasan as the Board's representative in ICC.
In order to reach a decision on ousting Srinivasan, an SGM needs to be called and Dalmiya along with Secretary Anurag Thakur is exploring that option.
However, they are yet to decide on a date as of now as the members need to be given three weeks of notice period.
"To oust Srinivasan, the ruling group will require two-thirds majority which is 21 units. If they can't ensure 21 votes, they won't call SGM for sure. Dalmiya and Thakur will have to ensure there are 21 votes in their favour," a member of Dalmiya faction said.
There are reports that the SGM will be called on May 24, the day of IPL final. Incidentally, Lalit Modi was suspended after the final of IPL 3 in 2010.
This comes a day after the internal feud within the BCCI took an ugly turn with Board Secretary Thakur launching a stinging attack on ICC Chairman Srinivasan, saying that he should actually share information on bookies with his own family members "whose involvement in betting has been proved".
A day after ICC issued an advisory to Thakur to stay away from suspected bookies, the BCCI secretary hit back at Srinivasan through an open letter in which he questioned the timing of the "counter offensive" initiated at the behest of the ICC Chairman.
Srinivasan though made it clear that he did not want to engage in a war of words with Thakur, saying he would take up the matter with him personally.
ICC Chief Executive Dave Richardson had on Sunday written a letter to BCCI president Dalmiya about Thakur being photographed with one Karan Gilhotra, whose name allegedly figures in the list of suspected bookies.
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