Meerut/Muzaffarnagar: Two youths were killed and four others were injured in a violent clash between two groups in Ghosipur village here today, the police said.
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According to SSP J Ravinder, the clash took place late night between the groups where firearms were used.
The injured youths were admitted to a hospital where they died during treatment, he said.
Eight persons have been arrested in the incident, he said.
Security has been tightened in the area, police added.
In a seperate incident, the headless body of a man was found in Taneda village here today, police said.
The body was found in the fields and is believed to be of a man aged about 30 years, a police official said.
The unidentified body has been sent for postmortem and investigations are underway, he said.
Washington: President Donald Trump has said he is considering issuing a “brand new” executive order on immigration by next week, even though he expressed confidence that he will win the legal battle over the immigration ban on nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries.
File Photo
“We will win that battle. The unfortunate part is that it takes time statutorily, but we will win that battle. We also have a lot of other options, including just filing a brand new order,” Trump told reporters travelling with him on Air Force One from Andrews Air Force Base to Florida.
Asked if his plan might be to issue a new executive order, Trump said: “It very well could be. We need speed for reasons of security, so it very well could be.”
Trump said that “in honour of the (9th US Circuit court) decision” he will likely wait until next week to respond with any action.
“Perhaps Monday or Tuesday,” he said.
The new executive order on immigration would include security measures, Trump said.
“New security measures. We have very, very strong vetting. I call it extreme vetting and we’re going very strong on security. We are going to have people coming to our country that want to be here for good reason,” he said.
Speaking at the White House Trump said: “We will be doing something very rapidly to do with the additional security for our country. You’ll be seeing that sometime next week,”
“In addition, we will continue to go through the court process and ultimately, I have no doubt we will win that particular case,” Trump told reporters during a joint news conference yesterday with the visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
“We are going to keep our country safe. We are going to do whatever is necessary to keep our country safe. We have had decision which we think will be very successful with, it shouldn’t have taken this much time because safety is a primary reason,” Trump said.
“One of the reasons I am standing here today, the security of our country, the voters felt I would give it the best security,” he said indicating that, despite the court setback, he would continue with his efforts for the safety and security of the US.
“While I’ve been President, which is just for a very short period of time, I’ve learned tremendous things that you could only learn, frankly, if you were in a certain position, namely President,” he said.
Trump said there are tremendous threats to the country.
“We will not allow that to happen, I can tell you that right now. So we’ll be going forward and we’ll be doing things to continue to make our country safe. It will happen rapidly and we will not allow people into our country who are looking to do harm to our people,” he said.
defibrillator, oxygen cylinders, intubating laryngoscopes and other safety drugs.
Eman is being transported by a fully equipped truck, which will be followed by an ambulance and a police escort to Saifee Hospital where a special room has been created for her.
Meanwhile Trump declined to respond to a report in Washington Post that his National Security Advisor General (rtd) Flynn discussed sanctions with Russia’s Ambassador to the US before he was sworn in as National Security Advisor.
Trump said he was not aware of the report.
“I don’t know about that. I haven’t seen it. What report is that? I haven’t seen that. I’ll look into that,” the President said.
He cautioned Iran when he was asked how he plans to respond to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who had earlier said that any nation that threatens Iran will “regret” it.
Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh): Shadab Hussain, 23, dropped out of school at age 11 to work in a leather factory in Kanpur, the oldest and largest industrial city of India’s most populous state. To support his family, parents and four siblings, he worked eight-hour shifts every day for a monthly salary of Rs 9,000.
Over eight years, he remained semi-literate, but he learned the fine art of creating new shoe designs from photos, making sure the shoes would fit, last and be comfortable. But his skills did not change his status as a casual worker with no medical or other benefits and no prospect of pension. As Hussain came of age working with cow hides, Kanpur’s once booming leather economy began to shrink, pushed to the edge by falling global demand, environmental regulations and contemporary cow politics.
Three years ago, with no prospects of a better life or a pay hike, Hussain and five friends from his mohalla (neighbourhood) quit the only job they knew. He drives an autorickshaw today; the others run roadside snack stalls.
In the 1990s, Kanpur’s leather industry employed a million workers (there are no official data), according to IndiaSpend’s inquiries with the government and leather-industry representatives. With 176 of 400 leather tanning units shutting over 10 years, according to a joint secretary–who requested anonymity since he is not authorised to talk to the media–in UP’s industries department, that number has halved.
But earnings from the auto were irregular, from Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 a month. So, Hussain is about to begin a job designing and fixing ‘uppers’ (the upper part of a shoe that contains the tongue) at a shoe factory in NOIDA, located in UP but an extension of the metropolitan region of Delhi, India’s richest province, by per capita income.
“They are giving me Rs 12,000 a month but the working conditions are good,” he said, describing how he would work in an air conditioned workplace, be given a managerial task, monitoring the supply line, and stand a better chance to get married.
“Kab tak auto chalaunga. Long-term mein thoda standard job chahiye na? (How long will I drive an auto to make a living? In the long term, I need a job of some standard, don’t I?)” said Hussain.
Hussain’s story is common enough in UP, a state with about 70 million unemployed young people, aged 15 to 34, comprising a fourth of jobless Indians. UP’s median age is is 23, the least in India, and jobs–as the findings of a poll commissioned by IndiaSpend reported on February 6, 2017–are this election’s leading issue.
The decline of UP’s industrial powerhouse offer clues to its future
To understand why UP–a state with 138 million voters–cannot offer gainful employment to young people like Hussain, we looked for answers in the decline of Kanpur’s leading industry, leather and leather products.
Kanpur’s financial wellbeing is important to UP. The district that houses the city and its industrial areas contributed Rs 19,000 crore–or 4%–to the state’s gross domestic product of Rs 4.6 lakh crore ($ 75 million) in 2013-14, according to UP government data. This is the fourth-highest contribution by a single district–the differences between the top four are slender–along with Agra, Lucknow and Gautam Buddha Nagar (which includes NOIDA).
With 2% of UP’s population, Kanpur employs 6% of UP’s urban workforce, according to the sixth economic census, 2012-13. Only NOIDA generates more jobs–it employs about 10% of UP’s urban working population.
UP has 16% of India’s working youth (15-34), and 20% of its child population (5-14), which will join the job market over the next decade. About 45% of voters are below 35 years of age, according to data estimate from UP Chief Electoral Officer’s website, highest proportion in India, alongwith Bihar.
The future for these children is not good. Like Hussain, nine in every 100 students in UP leave school before completing class IV, the highest primary school dropout rate among India’s large states, according to 2015-16 district information system of education data. It has one teacher per 39 school students, as IndiaSpend reported on January 5, the worst in India, and the lowest enrolment rate among large states.
To the ranks of 70 million semi-educated youth, this means, will be added more semi-educated youth. And, if Kanpur’s economy is any indication, even casual, semi-industrial jobs once available to people like Hussain may no longer exist.
How Kanpur’s leather industry lost its shine
Called ‘Cawnpore’ during the Raj, Kanpur was once among India’s leading cities. It ran its first electric tram in 1907, the same year as what was once Bombay, and seven years after trams were first introduced in Kolkata.
The first textile company—Elgin Mills—was started here, five years after the revolt of 1857, paving way for nine textile companies before the start of the 20th century, making Kanpur northern India’s biggest industrial city.
Post-independence, most large Kanpur industries hit a growth block. The textile mills went into decline, after nationalisation in the 1970s. The other big Kanpur brand, Lal Imli blankets, set up by British India Corporation in 1876, also died a slow death post-nationalisation. It was leather that led the revival of Kanpur’s manufacturing sector in the 1980s.
The district is still the leading producer of leather and leather goods—predominantly footwear—with a quarter (268) of India’s footwear factories. Footwear exports form 40% of India’s leather exports and a third of India’s leather (and leather-product) exports go from Kanpur. Multiple regions in Tamil Nadu together contribute to 34% of these exports.
But Kanpur’s leather industry, as we said, is now in such a state of distress that large-scale migration is now evident, as the city’s population growth-rate drops.
Figures in %; Note: GBNagar = Gautam Buddha Nagar, includes NOIDA Source: Census of India
UP’s population grew 20% over the decade ended 2011, and while other large and growing UP cities, such as Lucknow, Agra and Meerut stayed close to this number, Kanpur’s growth rate fell to 9%, after seven decades of a 20% increase. Noida grew at over 40%, indicating rapid urbanisation and development.
Fall in global demand hit Kanpur the hardest
Global demand for leather, mainly from advanced economies, fell after 2014. This can be traced to the slowing of European economies and China. Leather exports from India fell by 4% in 2015-16 after growing over six years, but exports from Kanpur declined 11% over the same period.
Data obtained from Central Regional Office of Council of Leather Exports, Kanpur
Kanpur suffered especially in the footwear components and finished leather goods category. Saddlery–the leather gear used in horse-riding–is exported almost exclusively from Kanpur and its demand did not suffer, but did stagnate.
“Leather and products demand from the European Union has contracted in the past couple of years,” said Ali Ahmed, regional director (central region, Kanpur) of Council of Leather Exports.
Industry struggles to comply with green rules
Environmental regulations imposed on tanneries have crimped industry finances. The establishment of National Green Tribunal (NGT) in 2010 and its rigorous monitoring of pollution levels led to 128 of Kanpur’s 400 tanneries shutting. There are also at least 500 cases against other leather units in the principal bench of the NGT, as it records archive indicates.
“The tanning industry is known to be very polluting, especially through effluents high in organic and inorganic dissolved and suspended solids content,” noted this 2007 report. “A significant part of the chemical used in the leather processing is not actually absorbed in the process but is discharged into the environment.”
Cow politics now impacts the flow of raw material
Before 2014, about 1,000 cattle were brought to Kanpur’s largest abbatoir. Last year, after three years of political heat and emboldened Hindu vigilantism, this dropped to 500 and post-notebandi–as the scrapping of 86% of bank notes, by value, is termed colloquially–the number fell to less than 100, industry representatives told IndiaSpend on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue. The numbers are now rising, slowly.
“Cattle, which are now become a liability to farmers, run about 10 industries,” said Taj Alam, vice president of Uttar Pradesh Leather Industries Association. These industries include pharmaceuticals where gelatin prepared from hoofs, horns and the insides of hides are used, soaps where animal fat is used, upholstery where hair is used.
No place for the small entrepreneur
Worst impacted by the slowdown are small-scale leather shoemakers.
“Leather now represents the expensive segment in fashion merchandise,” said Mohammed Raees, a footwear maker in Begumganj, Kanpur’s traditional small-scale footwear hub. “Cheaper footwear and ladies’ purses can be produced using newly developed polymers, which people can afford and prefer as well.”
Begumganj and adjoining Chamanganj housed at least 1,000 household leather factories, according to local residents. These small businessmen had to adapt with changing market preferences. “Indians now demand cheaper stuff for regular use,” said Ahmed. “We had to change too.”
Guddu Mohammad, 50, a shoe worker, and his four associates work as skilled artisans in the only surviving household shoe making factory in Begumganj. “There were thousands of such shops in my childhood in Kanpur,” he recalled. “The large-industry revolution, which swallowed small shoemakers like us, could not accommodate all of us skilled workers.”
The party's tentative election campaign has failed to rally more groups and communities under its banner in western Uttar Pradesh.
Confused and conflicting signals from the Bharatiya Janata Party to its supporters in the run up to this month’s crucial Uttar Pradesh assembly polls appear to have seriously handicapped the saffron juggernaut that had swept the state barely three years ago in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
The party today is trapped between its traditional approach of polarising the Hindu vote against the Muslim minority and the new stratagem of provoking a class war between the haves and the have-nots through Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dramatic war on black money announced in early November. With only a few days left for polling in the first phase of elections, neither the old communal ploy nor the new demonetisation gambit appears to have taken off in the BJP campaign.
The absence of an emotive pitch to the voter that is normally the hallmark of the formidable Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh propaganda machine is palpable in western Uttar Pradesh where the polls begin later this week. Significantly, this is the same region, scorched by the communal flames of the Muzzafarnagar riots in 2013, that helped the BJP’s very successful campaign to polarise the entire Hindu vote in its favour some months later in the parliamentary polls. Even after the advent of the Modi regime in New Delhi, various groups allied to the RSS, helped covertly and overtly by BJP leaders, had kept communal tensions simmering in western Uttar Pradesh till not so long ago.
No communal problems
Yet despite initial fears that the region would be turned into a communal cauldron just before the state assembly to repeat the 2014 BJP triumph, there was little evidence of animosity between Hindus and Muslims to be seen during a recent road trip through several districts in the region including Muzaffarnagar and Shamli, which were torn apart by riots earlier. In fact, both communities seemed keen to forget the past and get on with their lives, stressing local civic problems and not the riots as the real electoral issues.
“The netas created the riots and all of us have suffered because of so much economic disruption. We don’t want to look back but need to move on,” declared a Hindu sweet shop owner in Muzaffarnagar city, echoing a common refrain from most members of the community across riot-affected areas.
Muslims seemed to consciously veer away from the subject of riots that killed, maimed and displaced so many members of their community. “We are worried about problems that face us today and not what happened in the past” was a common response from agricultural labourers, students and shopkeepers belonging to the minority community, when asked about the communal conflagration that had engulfed the region in the recent past.
Interestingly, in a recent television show, in which local residents in and around Muzaffarnagar participated , the entire audience, including a sizeable delegation of BJP supporters, loudly agreed that there was no communal tension in the region. Hindu-Muslim relations was not an issue in the coming polls, they said.
Tainted leaders
The BJP leaders from the region, such as Sangeet Som, Suresh Rana , Hukum Singh and Sanjeev Balyan, notorious for spreading communal tension, are on the backfoot.
Som, sitting MLA from Sardhana, is struggling in his constituency with many Hindus complaining that he had neglected the area.
Rana, MLA from Thana Bhawan, Shamli district is in trouble from various other caste groups in his constituency for favouring his own Thakur caste.
Hukum Singh, the BJP member of Parliament who created such a stir last year about an exodus of Hindus from Muslim dominated Kairana, is being criticised for choosing his daughter as the local candidate instead of his more popular nephew who is now contesting as a rebel.
Balyan, the BJP member of Parliament from Muzaffarnagar, who also happens to be a minister of state in Modi’s council of ministers at the Centre, is in a similar situation. A local BJP leader, who lives just few houses away from Balyan’s house in Muzaffarnagar city, shook his head sadly and claimed that although he had “captured” nine polling booths in 2014 on behalf of the BJP, he is unlikely to lift a finger this time beyond casting his own vote. “My own Jat community is very unhappy with the BJP so what can I do?” he lamented.
Disruption by demonetisation
The disarray among local BJP leaders and workers and their inability to polarise the Hindu voter partly stems from the confusion in the party created by the parallel strategy of pitting the poor against the rich suddenly introduced by the prime minister a few months ago. This unfamiliar politics of class war, never used by the Sangh or the BJP before, has alienated sections of their core base of traders, shopkeepers and farmers who have been hurt by the drastic disruption of cash flow. At the same time the party has simply not been able to convince the poor of the benefits of demonetisation particularly as they have emerged as the real victims of the unprecedented squeeze put on the cash economy.
Not surprisingly, the BJP is now hastily retreating from its earlier plan of using notebandi as its main weapon for the Uttar Pradesh polls. It is clearly on the defensive and at pains to claim that the sufferings caused by demonetisation were a temporary blip and are being falsely exaggerated by its opponents. The BJP leaders and workers hardly mention notebandi in their campaign pamphlets or posters and even Modi, in his public meeting in Meerut, made only a brief reference to it towards the end of his speech. At the Shukratal television audience show mentioned above, the BJP team, while countering sharp criticism of demonetisation by other participants, did not praise it but simply dismissed it as just a brief disruption that did not cause that much harm as opponents of the party were claiming.
The Jat anger
Unable to rally its supporters either on a communal plank or a war unleashed against the rich and corrupt, the BJP is facing defections from previously supportive groups, particularly the powerful Jat community in western Uttar Pradesh that had voted as a bloc for the party in the 2014 polls. The Jats are upset with the Modi government at the Centre for not doing enough to get them a good price for the sugarcane crop they grow in their fields. They are also increasingly restless about the delay in accepting the demand for reservation for their community and even more aggrieved with the way the BJP government in Haryana put down the Jat agitation in the state last year.
The disenchantment among the Jats with the BJP has led to the miraculous electoral revival of Rashtriya Lok Dal leader Ajit Singh, son of the late former Prime Minister and Jat patriarch Charan Singh. Not only is he taking away vital Jat votes but even the abrupt manner he was earlier evicted from the MP’s bungalow by the Modi’s government has become a matter of grievance and many members of his caste said this had hurt Jat pride.
So while the BJP is a contender in most seats in western Uttar Pradesh, its tentative election campaign and inability to rally more groups and communities under its banner means that the party may not get the kick start it would have hoped for in the first phase of the polls.
US President Donald Trump wants to build a wall along the US-Mexican border. Britain wants to retreat into its shell to become an isolated island state.
Building a great big wall will not close the gap. Jorge Duenes/Reuters
In France, far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen launched her campaign by saying, “The divide is no longer between the left and the right, but between the patriots and the globalists.”
Enthusiasm for inward-looking, protectionist economic agendas is sweeping across Europe, leaving xenophobic hatred in its wake.
Clearly, the experience of the past three decades of globalisation has produced massive dissatisfaction: so much that naïve, misplaced and often frightening measures are seen as genuine solutions by large parts of the electorate in the richest nations of the world.
Rising inequality, which has accompanied globalisation, has sprung to the fore as a key concern among economists, politicians and the public. The latest report by Oxfam documented this rise, and the figures were shocking, even to those of us who might already be convinced about the gravity of the problem: just eight men hold as much wealth as the bottom half of the world population.
The fateful eight. Jim Tanner/Reuters
What needs to be asked is the following: why is the world economy at this pass? Is it a labour-versus-labour problem? Would shutting borders lead to greater equality of incomes within countries? Would the poor and working class in developed countries, who are feeling the heat of unemployment, depressed wages and insecure futures, regain their (mostly imagined) former glory if their countries shut down their borders? Or is it the case that gains from globalisation, instead of trickling down, have been sucked upwards towards a tiny elite, making an already rich minority even richer? And that this elite resides within, not outside, their countries?
Labour vs capital
In September 2016, I was part of a group of 13 economists, along with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and three other chief economists of the World Bank, who met in Saltsjobaden, near Stockholm, to deliberate on the main challenges facing the global economy, and draft a short document highlighting some key issues.
This consensus document, the Stockholm Statement, was issued after intensive discussions within this small group. Our idea was to keep the statement short and focused on the most important issues. One of our main concerns was the phenomenon of rising inequality over the past three decades. The advent of advanced technology has meant that jobs can be outsourced, a point also highlighted by Donald Trump.
While this has meant an expansion of opportunities for workers overall, the workers in developed countries often view this, or are made to view this, as being against their interest. They are made to feel that jobs that were rightfully theirs were taken away by workers in other countries, or by immigrants who are willing to work for low wages.
This is a labour-versus-capital, or labour-versus-technology, problem. Automation has meant that even periods of high economic growth have not been periods of high growth of jobs. In periods of low growth or recession, such as we have seen in the US and Europe since the 2008 financial crisis, the already gloomy picture becomes even bleaker.
The age of automation is putting pressure on jobs. Toru Hanai/Reuters
While job and wages have grown slower compared to national incomes, salaries at the top have not only kept pace, but their rate of growth might even be higher. Thus, the gap between salaries of CEOs and top ranking managers and workers within firms has been increasing. The Oxfam report quotes from Thomas Piketty’s new research showing that in the US, in the past 30 years, the growth in the incomes of the bottom 50% has been zero, whereas the growth in the incomes of the top 1% has been 300%.
Thus, the real reason for depressed incomes and unemployment of the working classes in developed countries is not that workers from other countries are taking jobs.
The two main culprits are the slow rate of creation of new jobs, and the increasing inequality in the share of labour (wages) and capital (profits) within their own countries.
What we can do
Based on this analysis, we suggested three major policy responses.
First, we should invest in human capital, increasing skills alongside developing new technology. This would boost labour income as technology improves.
Second, governments have to legislate to transfer income within countries. This means new taxes, and sharing profits. The rise of technology does not have to mean the end of workers’ rights; specific labour legislation should be put in place to ensure this.
Finally, we must promote policies that cross borders. This means international organisation such as the UN and the World Bank should encourage policy harmonisation between nations. These policies must not just favour rich, industrialised nations, they should also allow emerging economies a voice in the debate.
A new social contract
The fact that the deliberations for the Stockholm Statement took place in Saltsjobaden is significant. It was here in 1938 that the social contract between labour and capital in Sweden, which was later expanded to include government, was sealed.
The contract specified the process of collective bargaining and management, and the focus was on negotiation and consultation, rather than hostility. Both the process and content of the historical Saltsjobaden Agreement hold lessons for management of our troubled times.
Our optimism for the future might seem like a mirage in light of recent political events.
But just as the collective voice of the majority today seems to favour a quick-fix, non-solution to rising inequality, our hope is that an articulation of the actual reasons behind rising inequality and insistence on a reasoned, balanced policy response could provide the real solutions needed to address the widening gap between rich and poor.
Ashwini Deshpande is Professor, Department of Economics,, University of Delhi
Gems from our own Surgical Strike specialist, Narendra Modi.
PM Modi recently said in the Parliament that “When can you have an operation? When the body is healthy. The economy was doing well and thus our decision was taken at the right time." Newsclick brings in some gems from our own surgical strike expert.
Remember the old one– Beheaded? No problem! Read a Vedic text and do a head transplant.
Here is a new one– Feeling well? Watch out! Doctor Modi cuts open healthy bodies.
Delhi High Court has agreed to hear plea seeking to trace ‘missing’ BSF Jawan, who posted video alleging that poor quality food was served to them.
The wife of a BSF jawan, who went public through the social media alleging poor quality food being served to soldiers, on Thursday filed a habeas corpus plea in the Delhi High Court claiming that her husband is untraceable and the family has been unable to contact him for last three days.
BSF jawan Tej Bahadur Yadav had on January 9 posted a video on Facebook which showed a meal box comprising a watery soup-like dal, which he said had only turmeric and salt and a burnt chapatti.
He had said this is what jawans were served at mealtime on duty at places including the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan and that jawans often went to bed on empty stomach.
Pursuant to the video going viral on the social media, the Prime Minister’s Office had sought a detailed factual report on it from the Union Home Ministry and BSF.
A PIL was also filed in the Delhi High Court seeking a direction to the government to depute higher officers to supervise cooking of proper healthy food and its distribution.
They were rushed to the hospital after complaining of stomach ache and vomiting.
Representation Image
At least 26 students were hospitalised, after eating a mid-day meal at a school in Nagula Malyala village in Telangana's Karimnagar district on Thursday.
They were rushed to the hospital after complaining of stomach ache and vomiting.
Around 67 students were reported to have been served the meal at the Government Primary School. A few hours later, around 26 students started vomiting, and showing symptoms of food poisoning. Mandal educational officer Chukka Reddy told The Hindu that the students had been taken to Government Headquarters Hospital in Karimnagar town, out of which three students continued to complain of vomiting.
However, the condition of the other students, is said to be stable.
Reddy also told The Hindu that the cause of the food poisoning could be the tomato curry which was allegedly made with some rotten tomatoes.
Meanwhile, a food inspector who visited the school, has collected samples of the food for testing.
Last year in December, around 19 students of the National Institute of Technology in Warangal were hospitalised after suspected food poisoning, when they ate food at a restaurant near their campus.
Another incident took place in Warangal last year, when 30 nursing students of MGM School of Nursing complained about food poisoning after consuming hostel food.
