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Tuesday 13 October 2009

Vedanta versus the villagers: the fight for the sacred mountain

Tribes say plans by UK-listed mining firm Vedanta to mine on holy land will destroy their way of life

 

Vedanta: Orissa, Kondh tribespeople,  Niyamgiri mountain, Orissa

Members of the Kutia Kondh tribe in the village of Dangadahal in the foothills of Niyamgiri mountain in Orissa state, India. Stone is being excavated for roads so Vedanta can extract bauxite. Photograph: Gethin Chamberlain

The ash spills out across the plain beneath the brooding bulk of Niyamgiri mountain, swamping the trees that once grew here, forming dirty grey-brown drifts around the stems of the now-dead scrub.

Every day there is more ash, pouring out of the alumina refinery that squats among the steep-sided, jungle-clad hills of western Orissa, India. The dust hangs in the air and clings to the landscape, settling on the huts of the aboriginal Kondh tribes who call this place home, choking those who breathe it in.

Niyamgiri is as remote as any place in the country: 600km from the state capital Bhubaneswar, accessible only by narrow, shattered roads pocked with deep holes, a world away from the economic powerhouse that is 21st-century India.

It is a place of quiet beauty, of lush green paddy fields and huge mango trees, where self-sufficient tribes still share the jungle with elephant, tiger and leopard. Yet this most unlikely place is now the frontline in a clash of civilisations that has pitched the indigenous population up against the corporate might of the British mining company Vedanta Resources, intent on dragging Niyamgiri into the modern world.

It is the mineral wealth lying beneath the slopes of the mountain that has drawn Vedanta to Niyamgiri. It wants to turn the hillside into a giant bauxite mine to feed its refinery at the foot of the mountain.

The FTSE 100-listed company, which is run by the abrasive billionaire Anil Agarwal, is pressing ahead despite a desperate local rearguard action and an international outcry. Yesterday the British government turned on the company, issuing an unexpectedly damning assessment of its behaviour.

Vedanta hopes the refinery will produce at least one million tonnes of alumina a year. But the Kondh people – the Dongria, Kutia and Jharania – need the bauxite too. It holds water remarkably well and helps feed the perennial streams on which they and the animals that live on the mountain rely. Once the bauxite is gone, they fear, the streams will run dry. And that will be the end of the Kondh.
Faced with ferocious local opposition and an international campaign to stop the development, the company has returned time and again to the courts to push its plans through. In July, after numerous setbacks and rulings against it, it was finally given permission by India's supreme court to start mining.
It has wasted no time. Already, the skeleton of an enormous conveyor belt snakes out of the refinery and up to the foot of the mountain. Beyond it, an ugly scar of deep red earth runs up the hillside where hundreds of trees have been felled. Convoys of lorries trundle along the narrow roads, churning them to mud.

There are still legal challenges that the protesters can make and there is also the remote possibility that Vedanta shareholders, which include the Church of England, could bring pressure on the board to reverse its plans.

Although the mining is yet to start in earnest, those who live in the hundreds of small villages that dot the slopes are in no doubt that the effects of Vedanta's presence are already being felt. People and animals are dying, they say: the number of cases of tuberculosis have shot up.
Basanti Majhi sits with her hands folded in her lap, in a hut in the centre of the Kutia Kondh village of Rengopali, a couple of hundred metres from where the company has sited the red mud pond that holds the waste slurry from the refining process.
The 12-year-old started coughing hard last year; her family took her to a doctor, who confirmed TB. She complains of constant pains in her hips and joints and of problems from the dust that settles on the village. "The dust gets in my eyes and it makes it hard to breathe," she says.
Salesmen
Her uncle, Lingaraj Majhi, says 12 people have died from TB in the village in the last year, including a nine-year-old girl and two middle-aged women. He blames dust and smoke from the refinery and the presence of the red mud pond.
"We never used to have a problem but the cases started to appear in the last two years," he said. "During the summer the dust comes in to our houses and gets everywhere, even into our food."
Outside the hut where Basanti sits is a plaque announcing the inauguration of the electrification of the village on 25 June 2008 in a scheme sponsored by Vedanta. Similiar signs adorn the walls of buildings all over the district, part of a concerted campaign by the company to win over the local population. It is hard to move without seeing the name Vedanta. But its critics are unconvinced, suggesting that in many instances the company is simply piggy-backing on existing schemes.
No sooner had the electricity arrived than salesmen turned up, hoping to take advantage of the small group of people who had received small packets of compensation for the loss of their land (many did not) to the red mud pond. Some of the villagers were persuaded to blow their cash on television sets and satellite dishes. Some also bought motorbikes. Only later did they stop to consider how they would pay for the electricity and the fuel to keep them going. With their land gone, few can afford it, and the dishes and bikes stand idle.
"The company promised us a developed way of life with electricity and such things, but now we have to pay for the electricity and we don't have any money," says Kuni Majhi, 40.
She used to grow crops on seven hectares of common land; when the pond was built, she lost the land. There was no compensation. Worse, many of the trees in the area were chopped down, so now she has to trek further to reach the jungle to find firewood and to pick whatever produce she can find.
"The way we were living, we were self-sufficient, and we had lived like that for generations," she says. "We could have lived like that for many more generations too. Because of these people, we cannot. But we will still fight to continue the old ways."
To the animist Kondh tribes, the mountain is more than the place where they live: it is their god. It has sustained them for generations, providing everything they need to survive. All over its slopes there are small shrines where they place offerings to the mountain from whatever they have taken from the jungle. When the mining starts, they fear that the mountain will be taken away from them.
High up in the foothills, 13 families live in two rows of huts in the Dongria Kondh village of Devapada. The huts line a central area in which an imposing wooden ceremonial arch marks the place where animal sacrifices are carried out.
The village is only accessible on foot, the path meandering through meadows in which the tribe is growing paddy. Every now and then there is a wooden watchtower, in which they will sit at night to guard against the wild animals which try to get at the crop, beating drums or waving lighted torches to scare them off.
Now they also have to keep watch for the contractors who are trying to build roads up the mountainsides.
"We don't want a road. The company will come and kill us," says Sitaram Kulesika, 23. He is sitting on a charpoy under the shade of a tree, toying with a new Nokia mobile phone, a rare concession to the outside world. Kulesika is involved in the campaign to stop the mining: the phone, he says, is a necessary evil to keep in touch with his fellow activists. "We stopped them coming up here. We went to explain to them that if they came we would have to leave. We don't want to get into clashes, so we are explaining peacefully."
Lost crops
Others have been less peaceful: the Kondh men routinely carry axes which they use for hunting and to work in the forest, and the contractors are wary of them. A number of the company's vehicles have been attacked in recent months.
Kulesika insists they just want to be left to get on with their lives. "We get everything we need from the mountain except salt and kerosene and we can barter for those," he says. But even now, that is becoming harder. "The smoke brings ash here and it is settling in the village. We can see the impact on the mango and the pineapple and the orange and banana. The flowers are falling early and the fruit is falling and we are losing our crops and the quality of the food is declining."
Down on the plain, the heavens have opened, huge drops of rain hammering into the muddy ruts which mark the road around the turn-off to the refinery. There are security guards everywhere, patrolling in vehicles and on motorbikes. A barbed wire fence and a wide ditch protect the growing hill of ash: any attempt to approach brings the guards out in force.
A short distance away, a crowd has gathered in the centre of the road. It is pouring with rain and they huddle under umbrellas to listen to the leaders of the anti-Vedanta campaign telling them that they can still stop the mine from going ahead. There are a few communist party banners and a lot of red bandanas tied around heads. A few men carry spears and bows and arrows; many more have brought their axes, which they wave in the air from time to time.
The police watch warily from behind a barricade, clutching bamboo shields and their long wooden lathis. They fear trouble, though the rain has dampened the enthusiasm of the crowd. The speakers finish and the crowd drifts away. An hour or so later, back in his village of Kundobodi, close to the refinery, Kumati Majhi, one of the protest leaders, is still railing against Vedanta. The company claims it is committed to sustainable development of the area, he says, but their actions tell another story.
"Once they start mining the mountain will be bulldozed and the rivers will dry up and our livelihood will be lost," he says. "We will become fish out of water. We don't know how to adapt and survive and our way of living is not available in the cities. We will be extinct."
IndiaMine
 


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Asda slips up on banana price war

A vicious supermarket price war has broken out over bananas, but the people who really foot the bill are the plantation workers

A third of banana sales are now fair trade. Photograph: Helen Yates/Picture It Now

 

 

Bananas down to 38p per kilo in Asda, 35p per kilo in Tesco this week. A supermarket price war over a fruit with as much comic potential as the banana ought to be funny. Asda has said that it will take the cost of slashing the retail price from its own margins and not pass the pain on down the supply chain, so surely consumers can only benefit as the big four rivals slug it out for market share. Except, of course, we know that's not how the script usually runs when UK supermarkets start price wars.

 
If anyone thinks supermarkets are in the business of simply handing cash back to customers, they are being naive. I've been analysing data on price rises in Asda on some of the biggest-selling brands between 8 July this year and last week – when the banana wars got heavy. There's been a 72% increase in PG Tips tea, a 45% rise on some Colgate top-selling toothpastes, a more than 100% increase on some Pringles crisps, 38% on Rich Tea biscuits, and 85% on single cream. These are steep rises, not on goods that were previously on promotion, but on the usual price.
 
That looks to me remarkably like a supermarket increasing its margin to build a war chest of cash. Can I be sure? No. Like most shoppers, I find it impossible to keep track of supermarket pricing because it is so variable and opaque. Even the competition authorities have admitted they do not have the resources to monitor what the big picture is. But it's a fair bet that what supermarkets give back to us with one hand, they are taking, or have already taken, with the other. In the short term, cutting the price of bananas and selling them below the cost of production is a game for them, a paper exercise in shifting profits around, designed to grab publicity, pull shoppers in to spend on other highly profitable goods, and squeeze their competitors.
But in the medium and long term, it's no game for the rest of the banana industry. A phony supermarket price war is a real war for them – one in which they tend to suffer the collateral damage. We know from the bitter history of such price wars that the costs have been passed down the chain, if not immediately, then over the subsequent months.

 

Asda/Wal-Mart was able to fund its early banana war in 2002 on the back of a global deal with Del Monte, which gave the transnational retailer an extraordinarily low price. Fair trade campaign groups have documented the conditions that were behind that price. In 1999, Del Monte sacked all 4,300 of its workers on one of its biggest plantations in Costa Rica, the country that supplies much of UK demand. They re-employed them on wages reduced by 30-50%, on longer hours, with fewer benefits.

This model was subsequently rolled out across the industrial banana sector. Aid organisations say that a deterioration in conditions has accompanied each banana war. That around 50% of workers on these plantations are now migrants within Latin America is a reflection of how poor pay and conditions became. For all their protestations that the cuts are not passed on, the fact remains that the world price of bananas has been driven down relentlessly since the 1970s. On the ground, fair trade campaigners say they still find evidence of poverty wages, excessive hours, poor health and safety standards, intimidation of union members and environmental degradation.
 
Under pressure from bad publicity about these conditions, the big global banana traders – Del Monte, Chiquita and Dole – were actually pushed into working with aid organisations and local unions to do something about them. They have seemed concerned to distance themselves from the trade's banana republic legacy. All that work, however, may be put at risk by Asda's gaming.
Most British shoppers do not want to be part of the exploitation that has historically been associated with the fruit. One third of banana sales are now fair trade, helped by Sainsbury's and Waitrose making the commitment to buy all their bananas from fair trade sources in 2007. But the current race to the bottom will put enormous pressure on them as they subsidise the difference. The smaller farmers, many of them in the Windward Islands, who produce that fair trade fruit fear the downward pressure on their prices the price war will build.
 
At some point, Asda will decide that the benefit of this particular loss leader has run its course. It will move on. But by then the damage to other people's livelihoods may have been done.

 

It's a zero-sum game, and if you want to know what happens when they play it, you need only look at the fate of British dairy farmers. Squeezed by the supermarkets over many years, the British dairy sector has been brought to the brink of collapse. We now cannot even meet demand for fresh milk, but have to import millions of litres each day from mainland Europe.

Did consumers benefit from this assault on sustainable farming and our long-term food security? The office of fair trading thought not, finding Asda, among others, guilty two years ago of price-fixing. So, please, don't fall for their bananas.





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Sunday 11 October 2009

Obama, man of peace? No, just a Nobel prize of a mistake


 
October 11, 2009

Robert Fisk: 

The US president received an award in the faint hope that he will succeed in the future. That's how desperate the Middle East situation has become

His Middle East policy is collapsing. The Israelis have taunted him by ignoring his demand for an end to settlement-building and by continuing to build their colonies on Arab land. His special envoy is bluntly told by the Israelis that an Arab-Israel peace will take "many years". Now he wants the Palestinians to talk peace to Israel without conditions. He put pressure on the Palestinian leader to throw away the opportunity of international scrutiny of UN Judge Goldstone's damning indictment of Israeli war crimes in Gaza while his Assistant Secretary of State said that the Goldstone report was "seriously flawed". After breaking his pre-election promise to call the 1915 Armenian massacres by Ottoman Turkey a genocide, he has urged the Armenians to sign a treaty with Turkey, again "without pre-conditions". His army is still facing an insurgency in Iraq. He cannot decide how to win "his" war in Afghanistan. I shall not mention Iran.
 
And now President Barack Obama has just won the Nobel Peace Prize. After only eight months in office. Not bad. No wonder he said he was "humbled" when told the news. He should have felt humiliated. But perhaps weakness becomes a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Shimon Peres won it, too, and he never won an Israeli election. Yasser Arafat won it. And look what happened to him. For the first time in history, the Norwegian Nobel committee awarded its peace prize to a man who has achieved nothing - in the faint hope that he will do something good in the future. That's how bad things are. That's how explosive the Middle East has become.
 
Isn't there anyone in the White House to remind Mr Obama that the Israelis have never obliged a US president who asked for an end to the building of colonies for Jews - and Jews only - on Arab land? Bill Clinton demanded this - it was written into the Oslo accords - and the Israelis ignored him. George W Bush demanded an end to the fighting in Jenin nine years ago. The Israelis ignored him. Mr Obama demands a total end to all settlement construction. "They just don't get it, do they?" an Israeli minister - apparently Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - was reported to have said when the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, reiterated her president's words. That's what Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's crackpot foreign minister - he's not as much a crackpot as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but he's getting close - said again on Thursday. "Whoever says it's possible to reach in the coming years a comprehensive agreement," he announced before meeting Mr Obama's benighted and elderly envoy George Mitchell, "... simply doesn't understand the reality."
 
Across Arabia, needless to say, the Arab potentates continue to shake with fear in their golden minarets. That great Lebanese journalist Samir Kassir - murdered in 2005, quite possibly by Mr Obama's new-found Syrian chums - put it well in one of his last essays. "Undeterred by Egypt since Sadat's peace," he wrote, "convinced of America's unfailing support, guaranteed moral impunity by Europe's bad conscience, and backed by a nuclear arsenal that was acquired with the help of Western powers, and that keeps growing without exciting any comment from the international community, Israel can literally do anything it wants, or is prompted to do by its leaders' fantasies of domination."
 
So Israel is getting away with it as usual, abusing the distinguished (and Jewish) head of the UN inquiry into Gaza war crimes - which also blamed Hamas - while joining the Americans in further disgracing the craven Palestinian Authority "President" Mahmoud Abbas, who is more interested in maintaining his relations with Washington than with his own Palestinian people. He's even gone back on his word to refuse peace talks until Israel's colonial expansion comes to an end. In a single devastating sentence, that usually mild Jordanian commentator Rami Khouri noted last week that Mr Abbas is "a tragic shell of a man, hollow, politically impotent, backed and respected by nobody". I put "President" Abbas into quotation marks since he now has Mr Ahmadinejad's status in the eyes of his people. Hamas is delighted. Thanks to President Obama.
 
Oddly, Mr Obama is also humiliating the Armenian president, Serg Sarkisian, by insisting that he talks to his Turkish adversaries without conditions. In the West Bank, you have to forget the Jewish colonies. In Armenia, you have to forget the Turkish murder of one and a half million Armenians in 1915. Mr Obama refused to honour his pre-election promise to recognise the 20th century's first holocaust as a genocide. But if he can't handle the First World War, how can he handle World War Three?
 
Mr Obama advertised the Afghanistan conflict as the war America had to fight - not that anarchic land of Mesopotamia which Mr Bush rashly invaded. He'd forgotten that Afghanistan was another Bush war; and he even announced that Pakistan was now America's war, too. The White House produced its "Afpak" soundbite. And the drones came in droves over the old Durand Line, to kill the Taliban and a host of innocent civilians. Should Mr Obama concentrate on al-Qa'ida? Or yield to General Stanley McChrystal's Vietnam-style demand for 40,000 more troops? The White House shows the two of them sitting opposite each other, Mr Obama in the smoothie suite, McChrystal in his battledress. The rabbit and the hare.
 
No way are they going to win. The neocons say that "the graveyard of empire" is a cliché. It is. But it's also true. The Afghan government is totally corrupted; its paid warlords - paid by Karzai and the Americans - ramp up the drugs trade and the fear of Afghan civilians. But it's much bigger than this.
 
The Indian embassy was bombed again last week. Has Mr Obama any idea why? Does he realise that Washington's decision to support India against Pakistan over Kashmir - symbolised by his appointment of Richard Holbrooke as envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan but with no remit to discuss divided Kashmir - enraged Pakistan. He may want India to balance the power of China (some hope!) but Pakistan's military intelligence realises that the only way of persuading Mr Obama to act fairly over Kashmir - recognising Pakistan's claims as well as India's - is to increase their support for the Taliban. No justice in Kashmir, no security for US troops - or the Indian embassy - in Afghanistan.
 
Then, after stroking the Iranian pussycat at the Geneva nuclear talks, the US president discovered that the feline was showing its claws again at the end of last week. A Revolutionary Guard commander, an adviser to Supreme Leader Khamenei, warned that Iran would "blow up the heart" of Israel if Israel or the US attacked the Islamic Republic. I doubt it. Blow up Israel and you blow up "Palestine". Iranians - who understand the West much better than we understand them - have another policy in the case of the apocalypse. If the Israelis attack, they may leave Israel alone. They have a plan, I'm told, to target instead only US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their bases in the Gulf and their warships cruising through Hormuz. They would leave Israel alone. Americans would then learn the price of kneeling before their Israeli masters.
 
For the Iranians know that the US has no stomach for a third war in the Middle East. Which is why Mr Obama has been sending his generals thick and fast to the defence ministry in Tel Aviv to tell the Israelis not to strike at Iran. And why Israel's leaders - including Mr Netanyahu - were blowing the peace pipe all week about the need for international negotiations with Iran. But it raises an interesting question. Is Mr Obama more frightened of Iran's retaliation? Or of its nuclear capabilities? Or more terrified of Israel's possible aggression against Iran?
 
But, please, no attacks on 10 December. That's when Barack Obama turns up in Oslo to pocket his peace prize - for achievements he has not yet achieved and for dreams that will turn into nightmares.



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Friday 9 October 2009

The pressure's all mine


 

 

Why and when players feel under the cosh, what it does to them, and how to deal with it

Aakash Chopra

October 8, 2009

Lance Klusener takes a run for Allan Donald fails to make his crease at the other end, Australia v South Africa, 2nd semi-final, World Cup, Birmingham, June 17, 1999
The 1999 World Cup semi-final run-out: pressure does different things to different people © PA Photos
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Ever wonder why Chetan Sharma couldn't bowl a last-ball yorker in the Sharjah final against Pakistan all those years ago and instead bowled a low full-toss that Javed Miandad promptly hit for a six to win the match? After all, Sharma was extremely effective with the old ball in the slog overs. He could produce yorkers almost at will, which was why he was entrusted with the job of bowling that crucial final over. Let me try and put you in the shoes of players at such moments.

 

Scene 1 Imagine you're fielding at long-off in a friendly game at the Eden Gardens. The batsmen stroll a single. You field the ball without fuss and throw it. It's a routine drill for you.

Scene 2 Imagine you're doing the above on your first-class debut. There are senior players, perhaps even selectors, watching you and you want to do it absolutely right. You keep your eyes on the ball and ensure that you don't fumble, and promptly return the ball to the bowler. You feel some nerves but nothing that you can't handle.

Scene 3 Now change the colour of the jersey to India's blue and imagine playing in front of 100,000 people. The noise in the stadium is deafening. You can hear the people in the stands behind you shout as they realise the ball is coming their way. The batsmen are pressing for a non-existent second run to put pressure on you. But you hold your nerve, pick the ball cleanly, throw it back and heave a sigh of relief.

Scene 4 It's the last ball of a final between India and Pakistan. The opposition needs two runs to win the game. The ball is hit in your direction. They're running hard and you need to pounce, collect it cleanly and make a solid and accurate return to ensure a run-out. All of this happens in no more than a few seconds, but they seem to last forever. One slip-up could cost your team the match, and with it the trophy. It may even cost you your place in the side. You could be a veritable pariah to the watching millions.

 

Nothing is fundamentally different between those four scenarios - except for the degree of pressure involved. The ground remained the same, so did the power with which the shot was hit, and the weight of the ball. But there's a huge difference between fielding in a friendly and in an international match, especially when a match, trophy or career is at stake.

 

I use fielding as an example because luck plays a smaller role in fielding than it does in other disciplines. You might get a good ball while batting or the batsman might hit a great shot off a good ball you bowl, but with fielding there are few such issues.

 
 
Ricky Ponting says that unless playing a certain shot or bowling a certain ball hasn't become a habit, it's almost impossible to produce it under pressure. For example, if a lofted shot over covers is your get-out-of-jail shot you must perfect the shot in practice
 

 

Fear of failure

Cricketers, like everyone else, have an inherent desire to succeed. We are taught the consequences of failure from an early age. If you don't perform, you're dropped from the side and you have to endure criticism from peers, coaches and others. The desire to succeed gives birth to the fear of failure. It's this fear that breeds nervousness, especially at the beginning of an innings. Only a few can remain calm while facing their first ball or running in to bowl their first delivery. There's always the fear of things going awfully wrong. It isn't only public failure that haunts a cricketer but also the knowledge that that failure could mean the end of the road for him at that particular level.

 

I remember playing for the Board President's XI against New Zealand just before my Test debut. I had had a knee surgery a few months before that, and it was my first competitive game in six months. The only thought that occupied my mind while facing Ian Butler was that I had to survive the first ball somehow and not get out for a duck. Logically there isn't much difference between getting out for 0 and for 1, but the mind seldom follows logic. The obsession with getting off the mark exists at all levels.

 

The higher the stakes, the bigger the fear. The fear of failure is at its pinnacle when you're playing for your place in the side. Both Dinesh Karthik and Abhishek Nayar found themselves in such a situation against West Indies in the Champions Trophy, and the effect was quite visible. Both would probably have played differently at any other time in their careers, but not on that day. They were circumspect and did everything in their power to avoid failure.

 

Fear of success

A tennis player committing unforced errors and double faults while serving for the match, a golfer missing a straightforward putt on the 18th hole, and a batsman taking a non-existing single on 99 to reach his hundred are common.

 

Anticipating success, and the accolades that come with it, coupled with the fear of ruining all the hard work that has been put in, makes a player nervous near the finishing line. The mind is in two places: one part wanders into the future, contemplating the kudos, while the other is scared of stumbling at the last hurdle. As a result, the execution of simple skills becomes difficult and the ability to think rationally deserts the individual. In hindsight, I must have felt the same way when I swept Stuart MacGill on 48 in the Melbourne Test of 2003. I don't usually play the sweep shot, but the eagerness to score a fifty did me in.

Javed Miandad celebrates after winning the match with a six off the last ball, Pakistan v India, Austral-Asia Cup final, Sharjah, 18 April, 1986
While Chetan Sharma lost the plot in the Sharjah final, Javed Miandad showed he fed off the situation © Cricinfo Ltd

Lance Klusener and Allan Donald did something similar in the 1999 World Cup semi-final against Australia. Klusener could have hit a boundary with ease, and he had two more deliveries to go, but it all ended in a messy run-out.

 

Pressure from external circumstances

There are times when it's not the match situation that puts pressure on you. Remember Sachin Tendulkar's sleepless nights before the India-Pakistan clash in the 2003 World Cup? He doesn't lose sleep over every international game, but that wasn't any old game - it was an India-Pakistan clash in the biggest tournament of them all. I'm sure English and Australian cricketers face the same situation during the Ashes. In these cases it's not the quality of the opposition that puts you under pressure but the importance of the occasion and the expectations of people back home.

 

Individuals respond differently to pressure

The pressure that you feel has a lot to do with the form you are in and also the match situation. The pressure you feel while batting on the first day of a Test match is quite different from that which you feel while batting to save a Test in the fourth innings.

 

Two individuals facing the same opposition react differently thanks to the sort of form they are in. In the third Test match in Chennai against Australia in 2004-05, India had to bat only a few overs at the end of the fourth day. Virender Sehwag, who was in sublime form, saw it as an opportunity to score a quick 20, since the field was attacking, considering it was a short session. On the contrary Yuvraj Singh couldn't wait to get off the park. But it doesn't really tell you anything about the attitude or the mental toughness of either batsman because the same Sehwag wasn't keen to bat against the lesser bowlers of Maharashtra in a less important Ranji Trophy game at a time when he couldn't get the ball off the square.

 

How does on handle pressure?

Different players have different ways of dealing with pressure.

 

Brendon McCullum says that one must rein oneself in under pressure. Instead of going for a big heave when you're not seeing the ball well and your feet are not moving, take a single to get the other batsman on strike. Doing that gives you time to settle down and find form.

 
 
The desire to succeed gives birth to the fear of failure. It's this fear that breeds nervousness, especially at the beginning of an innings
 

 

Ricky Ponting says that the only way to do well under pressure is to work hard in the nets. While he agrees that quality of practice is very important, he believes the quantity also plays a big role. He adds that unless playing a certain shot or bowling a certain ball hasn't become a habit, it's almost impossible to produce it under pressure. For example, if a lofted shot over covers is your get-out-of-jail shot, you must perfect it in practice to execute it to perfection in a match.

 

The importance of detachment

Players who are able to detach themselves from the importance of the occasion are better equipped to handle pressure. John Buchanan spoke to us at Kolkata Knight Riders about the need to disconnect from the hype created around the game in order to perform to potential.

We, as players, tend to go with the flow in big matches and at crucial situations. One feels pressured to hit a big shot as soon as the asking-rate goes over seven. Even though the situation is not as alarming as it sounds - because seven an over is achievable with sensible cricket and a few calculated risks - the pressure gets to people.

 

S Sriram once told me what to do in situations like this: "Postpone the desire to hit a big one by 10 minutes and play percentage cricket till then. But if you still feel the need to go for the jugular after 10 minutes, you should." The idea here is to think rationally instead of going with the flow and hitting a cross-batted slog off a good ball. One must try to play to one's strengths.

 

Bishan Bedi used to tell us that pressure is something you put on yourself. The scoreboard just shows digits and we get nervous or confident depending on how we read them. It sounds ridiculously simple, but it isn't.

 

Feeling under pressure is a state of mind, and I think staying in the present and playing on the merit of the ball works for me. Sharma and Miandad were at the opposite ends of the spectrum on that particular ball in that fateful match. One couldn't think or perhaps couldn't execute his plan under pressure, while the other not only thought rationally but also achieved an extremely difficult task. That's what pressure does to people. And how they handle and react to pressure is what separates great players from good ones.




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The Nobel prize for economics may need its own bailout


 

 

Facing a similar crisis of legitimacy, the prize needs to prove it is much more than an award for stockmarket speculators.

 

The economics award is usually the last of the Nobel prizes to be announced. Correctly so, for it was also the last to be created – and strictly speaking is not even a real Nobel prize. The five original awards, first given out in 1901 for literature, peace, medicine/physiology, physics and chemistry, were intended by Alfred Nobel to recognise contributions that enhanced the quality of human life, through scientific advance, literary creativity or efforts at bringing about peace.

 

The economics prize is not a prize of the Nobel Foundation; rather, it was created in 1968 by the Central Bank of Sweden as a "prize in economic sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel". However, it now has the same procedure of selection by the Swedish Academy, and the same cash award presented at a similar ceremony as the Nobel prizes.

 
There have been recurrent doubts about whether it conforms to the basic goals of the prizes as envisaged by the founder. Is economics a science, on the same lines as physics or chemistry? Does it unambiguously contribute to human wellbeing, like peace or literature? In any case, should economics be privileged over other branches of learning?
 
Peter Nobel, great-grandnephew of the founder and human rights activist, famously argued that Alfred Nobel would not have approved of such a prize, which he termed "a PR coup by economists to improve their reputation ... most often awarded to stockmarket speculators".

 

Certainly the reputation of economists has needed building up, not only in the wake of the global financial crisis, but even before that. As much of mainstream economics became obsessed with navel-gazing esoteric models or theories designed to justify market liberalism, the public became relatively more alienated from the activities of economists. In such a context, the Nobel prize has been a useful tool not only to proclaim the conceptual advances supposedly made by "the dismal science" but also to encourage certain types of economic analysis and research. So its power extends beyond public recognition, altering the very production of economic knowledge.

 
The early prizes generally honoured economists whose work was already widely recognised. But even in the first decade, the list of exceptions was probably more impressive than that of the recipients, as greats like Michal Kalecki, Joan Robinson, Richard Kahn, Nicholas Kaldor and Piero Sraffa were overlooked in favour of lesser contributors. In the subsequent period, the award has occasionally gone to economists of relatively minor and sometimes absolutely questionable achievement, whom others in the profession quickly had to look up when the announcement was made.
 
The political effect of the prize in the profession has been undeniable. There has been overwhelming domination of neoclassical economics, to the exclusion of alternative streams of thought, with only a few nods in the direction of broader and more socially embracing approaches. This has encouraged more conservative approaches in research and teaching.

 

Monetarist and free market approaches have been disproportionately rewarded, often at crucial times. For example, the 1974 award to Friedrich von Hayek led to a resurgence of interest in the Austrian school and made his book The Road to Serfdom a bestseller. Two years later the prize went to Milton Friedman, making his extreme form of monetarism academically respectable and even leading to a conservative policy revolution. Economic history in the turgid and restricting form of retrospective econometrics was promoted by the 1993 award to Robert Fogel and Douglass North, while rational expectations theory was given a big boost by honouring Robert Lucas in 1995.

 

The geographical distribution of the award both creates and reflects power hierarchies in the discipline. The economics prize has been awarded 40 times to 62 recipients, 42 of whom have been from the US, while more than 50 were working in the US at the time of the award. The University of Chicago has 11 laureates, leading to the joke about "the Stockholm-Chicago Express". This does not reflect the actual state of economic knowledge so much as the biases and blindness of the jury. Only two people from developing countries have received it (Arthur Lewis and Amartya Sen) and both worked in the US and Britain. Only three with an interest in the economics of developing countries – which is the economic reality for around three quarters of the world's population – have received the award.

 

In recent years the prize has been focused on financial market behaviour. In 1997, the award went to two economists – Robert Merton and Myron Scholes – who were supposed to have discovered a method of valuing derivatives that could reduce or eliminate risk in financial investment. When the hedge fund they ran (Long Term Capital Management) went bust within the year and had to be rescued by the US federal reserve, there was some embarrassment. Perhaps to right this wrong, a few years later the prize was given to economists George Akerlof and Joseph Stiglitz, who had pointed to the imperfect functioning of financial markets. The award last year to Paul Krugman may also have indicated some bowing to changing times.


 
So far, no woman has received the economics Nobel. Apart from obvious exclusions such as Joan Robinson, this also reflects power hierarchies within the subject, because women economists even in the US and UK tend to be concentrated in the lower reaches of the academics profession, as researchers and lecturers rather than professors.
 
These imbalances will not be rectified easily. But the Nobel prize in economics may now be as much in need of wider legitimacy as the economics profession itself. It will be interesting to see if this is reflected on Monday, when the current year's winner is announced.



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Thursday 8 October 2009

Sowetan


 
Published by TiCam- 04-10-07
news In South Africa, women now rape men

It is strange but true. In South Africa, women are now raping men. If you are tall, handsome and huge, you may likely be a target. Moreover, if you love walking alone in the open field or at night, you may be taking a big risk and chances are that you may fall a prey to the gang of women rapists.
Nevertheless, if a man is not in the right mood for sex, the rapists have a way of creating one. They caress, suck and rub the victim's penis with a lotion. And before you say rape, the penis is erect and ready for action.
Penultimate Tuesday, the South African police arrested a 30-year old woman for allegedly luring a young man into an open field and then raped him while her two other friends stood guard, waiting for their turn. The police confirmed that after the incident, the victim's bruised penis was treated at a local hospital.
In another incident widely reported in the local media, two women allegedly lured a 21-year old job seeker away from a brick company by pretending they were equally looking for work. While walking across an open field, they pounced on the young man and raped him. According to report, police arrested a woman while the other escaped.
The victim told the police thus: "They threatened me, forced me to take off my pants, and then rubbed lotion on my penis to get an erection. The other woman kept watch while the arrested woman had sex with me."
Modus operandi
According to Sowetan, a South African newspaper, the rapists operate in a group of two or three. They ride in posh cars and look out for a man walking alone. Once they spot a potential prey, they pull up beside him and offer to give him a ride. If he accepts their offer, the women would take him to their house and at gunpoint, take their turn to rape him.
Only recently, the police confirmed the incident of a 24-year old man, who after being abducted at gunpoint by three women traveling in a white BMW, was forced to kneel face down on the back seat of the car. He was prevented from looking up and was only allowed to look about him when he was inside the house. For three days, the young man was kept in the house and gang raped.
According to Inspector Manyadza Ralidzhivha, the victim, who was dumped in the township after the incident reported that, "the women who were older than him, made him drink some liquids and then took turns having sex with him. They did not talk too much, but had sex with him as he lay face-up on the bed in a house."
Major problem
For Thembi Hlatshuiayo and Phindile Morewwa, both students of a popular secondary school in Johannesburg, apart from being a major problem in South Africa, women raping men has become a source of embarrassment to the womenfolk.
"The issue of women raping men is now one of the major problems in South Africa. In fact, it is a source of embarrassment to us," Thembi said.
Giving AIDS back to men
Saturday Sun investigation, however, revealed that the alleged rapists are mostly AIDS infected women, who believed that they have contacted the killer disease from men and have decided to pay them back in their own coins.
Lebo Leburu, a shop assistant in Johannesburg, told Saturday Sun thus: "The rapists are AIDS infected prostitutes. They are angry that men have given them the disease and have decided to give it back to them."



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Wednesday 7 October 2009

The idea of Non Excludability - Explained in a current context

 

Mark Steel:

I wonder if one day you'll be able to opt out of paying for war you don't like

Who would have guessed, when people first marvelled at the ingenuity of the earliest aircraft, that this awesome achievement would result in the miserable wretched branch of industry known as airline companies? For example, British Airways have announced plans to charge up to £40 per person for the luxury of booking a seat. So if a family doesn't pay the extra, it could find itself separated all over the plane. And the staff will probably be instructed to sell this charge by saying "If you don't pay we MAY be able to sit your children next to you, and we will TRY not to sit them in the middle of a Plymouth nursery workers hen night outing but there's no guarantee so we do recommend the service for peace of mind".
 
Every aspect of the journey; food, drink, luggage, is becoming an "extra", to the point where Ryanair planned to charge £1 for use of the toilet. Next they'll replace safety announcements with an auction for the only oxygen mask. If the current airlines had been around in 1941 they'd have bought up the Spitfires, and pilots returning from the Battle of Britain would have been told they'd used more than their quota of bullets and owed Ryanair seventeen shillings and threepence.
 
But this isn't just about air travel. The arguments used to justify these measures are along the lines of "Why should every customer pay for privileges they don't require themselves?" And there will be people who snarl "Why should part of my ticket price go towards the upkeep of a toilet when I don't use it because I prefer to go in a jar?" This attitude is seeping through every area of business. The arguments directed against the BBC from other broadcasters amount to complaints that some people have to pay for programmes they don't watch. In other words, "Why should I have to pay for yesterday's weather forecast when I stayed in all day? So these layabouts are staying dry and I'm paying for it."
 
Big TV companies want to go further with this, charging for individual sporting events and programmes. If they owned newspapers you'd have to pay extra for the sports results, or the crossword, and be told "Why should regular readers have to fork out for the cryptic minority?"
 
Local councils promote this extreme individuality. The tennis court in my local park now greets you with a sign saying "If you don't pay you won't play." So not only do they charge for what were communal facilities, they don't even do it politely. Instead they sound like The Mafia in rhyme, and might as well say "Three sets costs you twenty notes or Claudio here will slit your throats."
Even rubbish dumps come under the new system. You're now asked to provide proof of address before using a council dump, to prevent those scurrilous types who cross the border and dump stuff in an area they haven't paid for. This is probably what happened in Yugoslavia. Slobodan Milosevic held rallies where he screamed "How long must we sit back while thieves and vagabonds come over here from Dubrovnik to throw their rotting settees in our dump? This is exactly what happened in the great turnip-dumping battles of 1352 , this means war." Soon tall people will have to pay more for bus tickets because "If they were all the same size as me, the bus could be shorter and use less red paint so why should I have to pay...." This attitude isn't natural. It has to be cultivated. When you come back from holiday your neighbours don't say "Welcome back dear. We kept an eye on the place while you were away, just to be on the safe side. So here's an invoice for security, we'll be expecting payment in thirty days or we will sue, dear, ooh you've got a lovely tan."
 
Society depends and thrives on a collective attitude, but there seems to be a trend now to go further than running every corner of society according to the rules of business, and sub-divide each business so everyone is responsible solely for themself. And if enough companies and politicians insist we're all being robbed by paying for toilets and tennis courts and invalidity benefits that we don't directly benefit from, we'll come to accept it must be true. In which case I wonder if in future you can opt out of paying for a war you don't agree with, as long as you yell: "Why should I have to pay for cruise missiles when I can see he hasn't even got these supposed weapons. I'm being robbed."


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