Child labour in India

Since almost 3 weeks there is officially a law banning child
labour in India. At first it sounds one of the most promising thing
done in a country with the population of 1 billion of which more than
half of them are under 25. But this ban doesn't solve the problem lying
beneath one of many series of such acts against children. Like most of
the human rights defined according to the standard of living in present
Europe weaving blind eye to the situation in the same geographical
place few years ago, which to some extent still persists in backyards
of India hidden behind the facades of glittering cities. This ban would
be simply snatching the bread from the mouth of not only the children,
but their parents and the whole family dependent on the wages of their
offsprings. Child labour is neither the problem of implementation of
law, general understanding towards young clads, nor pure social
economics, but rather it is very subtle social problem. Child labour
should not be understood at hatred of the parents towards their
children, rather it is dark necessity, which force them to send their
children to work. There are many innovative solutions, like the
provision of free food in the school and other socio-economic
initiatives, where both, the family and a child, benefits, although the
100% implementation of which is argumentative question, but these
schemes helps few of them, a usual problem of very huge country. In
this country, no proper digital record of any sort of work is kept, of
course, outside urban areas, which leads to many mischievous acts
against common worker, which is worst, when it comes to children. This
can be controlled through law, but the real problem of impoverishment
cannot be solved. Indians cannot belong to just one culture. It is like
pure indian spices, each having discreet taste and smell. The same is
true with the mentality of the people in different geographical
locations of rural India. All those innovative initiatives apart from
the pure universal law should be matched with different realities and
designed such way to solve the real social problem from within, if the
government is not able to create a cushion of job opportunities for
elder family members. If government and NGO can provide and, of course,
guarantee the education as well as employment to children, though the
children not having certain pleasure of urban kids, these children when
grown-up can make difference to their family and their own children in
the future as well. But my own pressing point would be the creation of
huge database of working population electronically, in fact,
prestigious indian IT industry is capable and willing to do that. What
remains to be seen is whether the cabinet is ready for it.

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past-colonist taking over past-colonialist

There is lot of buzz about Mittal Steel’s attempt to take over Arcelor, in other words largest steel company taking over second largest steel company, which will make the company larger than next three competitors together. Amazing! Although it is truly european company taking over another european company, racism has been incensed by europeans, since the former one is possessed by Indian industrialist.

Technically and strategically it is one of the best move to organize commodity business of steel. All industrial analysis and practices support it, the fact that shares of these companies have gone higher after the declaration. But it is old protective mentality shown by french as well as luxemburger prime minister showing unnecessary nationalism. Mittal Steel, mostly owned by Mittal Family, the prime of the family Laxmi Mittal possess indian passport, lives in Central London and his company is registered in Rotterdam, having absolute international management team on his board. Whereas Arcelor came to being through merging of major european steel industries from Spain, French, Belgium and Luxembourg, where Luxemburg government hold largest share of 5.8% in the company. Mittal Steel is huge empire covering 5 continents, still it is truly european company. It is of benefit for Europe, which wants to survive in old industrial powers during the time of aging economies.

The demand for steel is going higher, as India and China are booming with growth-rate of 8%, i.e. the prices for steels r much too high. Steel industry is still more scattered, in the sense that if this deal fructifies, the combined company will still have share of 10%. But less players in the field means better consolidation to regulation of prices, which in end effect push economic growth. This is the simple logic I can put forward.

It has become the question of national pride, since this deal lauds racism on european side and in the forthcoming India-EU meet, this will take diplomatic mold. It is quite clear how european companies are readily taking over asian companies, then why not asian companies, in fact in this case asian industrialist with european company can take over european company. Commerce and Industry Minister of India Kamal Nath shot off a strongly worded letter to the EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson on Wednesday, raising doubts over EU’s commitments to World Trade Organisation. Nath warned Mandelson that ongoing trade talks in the WTO could be ‘adversely impacted’ if the principle of national treatment (that requires foreigners to be treated like locals in various matters of trade) was not applied to Mittal’s takeover bid.

“Anything that vitiates the principle of national treatment, could adversely impact the ongoing trade talks. This is one of the basic principles of the WTO multilateral trading system. It requires that equal treatment be extended to all cross-border investments,” official sources told Business Standard. In fact, The national treatment clause is an obligation on members and is enshrined in Article III of GATT 1994. It condemned discrimination between foreign and national investment, and products and services, the sources added. The forth-coming visit of french president Jacques Chirac will definitely heat up this discussion to upper level. It is interesting to see how it will affect the approach of european populist towards whole of Asia.

The Luxembourg prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker said, “The [Indian] government, although full of wise men, has just threatened the Grand Duchy with not ratifying a double-taxation agreement between India and Luxembourg”. But in my opinion the greater threat India can give to whole EU, if she says of rethinking of buying multi-billion dollar Airbus planes. In last Paris Aerospace Show, indian airliners had ordered more than 200 planes, mostly from Airbus. They have choice of choosing Boeing, which will definitely make whole EU to rethink of its attitude towards this bid and respecting India as a whole. Who knows, maybe this idea will be put on the paper during discussion with EU Commissioner on fair-trading issue.

There will be many such acquisitions in the future, and I’m ready to enjoy political battle between past-colonist and past-colonialist.