Raj Patel: The 'God' of Nothing

Raj Patel is an economist whose recent book is 'The Value of Nothing: How to reshape market society and redefine democracy'. In the book, Patel argues on the concept of 'value' and presses the need for a change in the way we perceive 'value'. Patel quotes Oscar Wilde: "Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing". Little did he know that his own value would increase drastically, not related to the price (and of course the sale) of his book!

It was after Patel appeared on television and gave interviews to boost the sale of his book, his 'value' increased exponentially. Watching him on the Colbert Report, a comedy show in the US, a religious cult announced Patel was their 'Maitreya' - the world teacher. The value they put on his skin colour and features far outstripped the value of his 'thought-provoking' book. Members of Share International believe their leader will have dark skin and stutter and will appear on TV.

The 'Maitreya' is supposed to awaken the desire for change, work and speak on better utilisation of resources. Patel who fit this bill received several emails and enquiries from followers of Share International who asked him if he was their 'Maitreya'.

Some of the more eager ones travelled several miles to meet him in person during the book launches only to be told by Patel that his value starts and ends with his ability to write and campaign on pressing economic issues and the rationale behind that.

In an interview to Sun, Patel claims he has taken off his email and contact details from his website, which I think has the potenial to diminish his value as an academician. The website of Share International doesn't mention Raj Patel by name but you do not need to stretch your imagination too far to realise that Patel has impressed them.

The Oxford and LSE educated Patel born to Indian parents and brought up in London has vehemently denied all such claims and has been quoted as saying that he is an ordinary bloke and not their 'Maitreya'.

I wonder what would have happened if he had said he is their 'Maitreya'. The price he would have had to pay for the 'value' associated with he being the Maitreya would have been much higher. And Patel at the end did what economists do the best. Match the value and price. Patel has chosen to be valued as an economist based on the £10.39 cover price of his book. Nothing more, nothing less!!

Asian voters, the Tory's software will get you!

Are you a voter in the UK? Are you from the Asian community? 

Then the Tories are here to get you!

Whether you are an Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi, or to narrow it down more, Hindus, Sikhs or Muslims, this election season the Consevatives promise to send you an 'ambassador' who not just shares your skin colour but can also speak your language to woo your votes.

UK elections furore is at its all time high and now the Tories are using a high tech software to 'convert' Asian voters. Developed by the British Asian Conservatory link, this software will 'racially profile' you. It will check all the names on the database of the constituent's electoral roll and find out what language the Asian voters are likely to speak. So you will soon find Tory representatatives conversant in your language either at your doorstep or over the phone selling you the Tory mantra.

Unfortunately for the Labour and Liberal Democrats, without such software, their canvassing methods would not be so tailormade for Asians. However, what they would be banking on is the 'loyalty' Asians have often showed them through votes.

So why this sudden fasination for the Asian votes? This election is crucial, it can swing either way and David Cameron knows the numbers that count. According to a Warwick University research, the Asian community has a much better voter turnout  (Indians - 67%, Pakistanis - 67% and Bangladeshis - 70% compared to the the national average of 60% in the last election) which makes them more reliable. Also with over a million Asian voters its no surprise the Tories need their votes to win the crucial seats that can get them a majority.

In December last year, the Tories added six more Asian contestants to their list, most of them in Labour dominated seats. 

Tony Blair's former constituency Sedgefield will now see Neil Mahapatra (pic left), an investment banker and an Oxford and Harvard alumni representing the Tories. Sedgefield has been represented for Labour since the 2007 by-election by Phil Wilson, a former aide to Tony Blair, who won with a majority of 6,956 over the Liberal Democrats.

Sachin Rajput, a councillor in Barnet since 2006, will stand for elections from Brent Central, a newly-created seat which  will probably be unique at the next election as the two sitting MPs Dawn Butler for Labour and Sarah Teather for the Lib Dems will be fighting for it. According to the Rallings and Thrasher calculations, it has a notional Labour majority of 7,469 over the Lib Dems, with the Conservatives starting in third place on a notional 13% of the vote.

Also Adeela Shafi (pic right) is representing the Tories for Bristol East, another Labour stronghold. Shafi is the only female Muslim Parliamentary Candidate for the Conservatives in the country, suitably contesting from a seat rich in Pakistanis & Muslims. 

So clearly some of these seats are not Tory target seats because of big Labour majority. However, given the political climate, the Tories are ready to fight this battle on the front foot. And they believe that with the help of this software they will be able to swing the ethnic minority votes in their favour. 

Perhaps easier said than done. But as a Asian voter, I will give the Tories points for trying.

Amartya Sen on women's representation bill!

Dr Amartya Sen is neither a politician nor a bureaucrat. He is an economist renowned for writing books that reveal his passion for equality, empowerment and justice. So when you walk up to him and ask him for his views on the women's representation bill the last thing you expect is: "I am not going to talk about reservation."

Moments back, Dr Sen was elaborating on the 'idea of justice' and how underdogs may seek power not so much to use them over others but so that others don't use it over them. So what aspect of justice is covered or left uncovered with the women's representation bill? I wonder how and why would a question, which is about a choice being made by a society, not excite an economist who is otherwise ready to dissect everything.

Dr Sen has insisted that it is far more important to remove remedial injustices rather than clamouring for a perfectly just society. Dr Sen, I would have relished your thoughts on whether the women's reservation bill is a step towards removing the remedial injustices or an example of India trying to be a just society.

In a packed auditorium in central London, the Nobel laureate mesmerised the crowd that had gathered to hear him at the Demos Annual Lecture with his forthright statements; In the Doha round India, China and Brazil acted to serve their interest and not Africa. It is wrong to think that the West is more materialistic. Mohen-jo Daro and the whole Indus valley civilisation revealed business, money and commerce. Among the members of the audience were British MPs, academicians, economists and PhD students - each of them interested in Amartyanomics.

Dr Sen's talk had much on India as well. The Bharat Ratna awardee lamented that the IITs do not get enough credit in India and that Nehru made a mistake by not focussing on primary education. He also shared his insights on primary education in India. "It is a great tragedy as many parents have not been to primary school." Private tuitions are costly in India and kids struggle to get their 'home task' done.

Dr Sen was delighted to field a question on the India caste-system which the questioner claimed had read about from a book written by his grandfather. As he smiled hearing the question, I realised how frail he was. His mug shots and video images do not give much of an idea about how old he is. His answers though clearly reflected how young he is at heart.

Dr Sen reasoned that people fear freedom in their own lives. “Freedom has many aspects. Those who are afraid of freedom are afraid of others - discontented masses, disgruntled feminists.”

He just stopped short of saying that Tata is the only group (in India) interested in philanthropic activities as compared to others. “Others might be richer than the head of Tata but their philanthropic activities are not huge,” he said.

While I do not know whether the other business groups will bother to reflect on what Dr Sen has to say, but if he articulates on the women’s representation bill it will give enough food for thought to the intelligentsia in India. The idea of justice or injustice will be more clear.

Hungry African nations feed the world

When you think about rural Africa, it’s almost always the face of a poor malnourished child that comes to mind with barely any clothes to his back and often chasing a van that’s bringing in food packets. But one would never think of Africa as a continent that is feeding the rest of the world.

According to the report in the Observer this Sunday, the oil rich Middle East, the space crunched Europe, the over populated Asia and of course the giant Americas have all found a solution to their depletion of natural resources like land and water by moving their food production to the extremely fertile, poverty stricken and iron fist controlled countries of Africa.

And some of the poorest nations of the world are now growing millions of tones of food on hundreds of thousands of hectares of land to feel the billions in the richer countries.

The Observer investigation estimates that up to 50m hectares of land has been acquired in the last few years or is in the process of being negotiated by governments and wealthy investors working with state subsidies.

The biggest buyer is Middle East with Saudi Arabia leading the way. British companies are growing vegetables and flowers in Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria and Tanzania while Indian firms are in Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Senegal and Mozambique, where they are growing rice, sugar cane, maize and lentils. Almost all the food produced is for consumption at the investors’ domestic market.

Land to grow biofuel crops is also in demand. To meet the 10% target by 2015, most European countries have now acquired almost 4 m hectare land in Africa for their biofuel needs. Another factor that experts feel will shoot up food prices and push millions more into starvation.

While many African governments argue that starvation doesn’t exist in their countries, the UN and Aid workers there beg to differ. In many areas the deals have led to evictions, civil unrest and complaints of land grabbing.

Over 20 countries in Africa including Sudan, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Malawi, Ethiopia, Congo, Zambia, Uganda, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Mali, Sierra Leone have opened up their arms to welcome foreign giants to ‘exploit’ their land and water resources. The indigenous population is however worried about their own survival.

In October 2009, 46% population of Ethiopia was malnourished and the Ethiopian government asked the international community for emergency food aid for 6.2 million people due to a prolonged drought. Last month Reuters reported that another 7 million Ethiopians are part of a food-for-work scheme, which means more than 13 million of the country's 80 million people rely on aid to survive.

Yet the Observer found that foreign companies were not being charged for water. One such farm in Awassa in Ethiopia (pic above) uses as much water a year as 100,000 Ethiopians. It is spread over 20 hectares and grows millions of tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables in computer controlled conditions. The daily output is 50 tonnes of food. All of which gets shipped to the Middle East.

While NGOs and aid workers are asking if this is the 21^st century colonization where the rich take what they want while the poor struggle to make ends meet; the benefits of bringing in expertise, technological know how and generating employment in Africa cannot be overlooked.

Perhaps a watchdog is required like the UN to monitor these deals and check if the benefits are reaching the poor and those displaced are duly compensated. I know it’s easier said than done in countries of Africa raged by civil war and unrest. Some of my African journalist friends had to escape their country when their reports exposed the dark deeds of those in power. Yet, they did not put their pen down and wrote about corruption and injustice. They strongly believed that the Africa situation could and would change.

I remember attending a talk last year by Gerard Prunier, Research Professor, University of Paris who discussed his book 'From Genocide to Continental War: The "Congolese" Conflict and the Crisis of Contemporary Africa'. Prunier remarked that Africa is still evolving and is bound to make all the mistakes that Europe and America made during their ‘evolution’ (dark ages). However it will be a few decades for Africa to stand on its feet but the speed at which Africa is growing is applaud able. And this gives hope.

Read the complete Observer report

BBC to close its Asian Network

It’s a sad day for Asian media in the UK. BBC stays firm on its stand to close down the Asian Network in an effort to streamline its products and justify the licensing fee. Along with it, 6 Music and a large part of the online team will face the axe.

Although there have been talks since last month, BBC’s director general Mark Thompson in a report to the BBC Trust today specifically recommends the closure of Asian Network. It lists the Asian Network’s audience as 0.4 million weekly listeners (on a decline) with a budget of £12.1 million making the cost per listener extremely high (cost per user per hour 6.9p).

While inside BBC there is much chaos at the moment, outside the supporters of the Asian Network have come together to help save the station. The social networking site facebook has a Save the BBC Asian Network page and promoting an online petition that has over 21000 signatures supporting the Asian Network and 6 Music. The goal is to get 100,000. Also Labour MP from Birmingham, Tom Watson has laid a motion in the Commons to save the station that caters to the high Asian voters in Birmingham.

Probably the only very vocal critic at the moment is Avtar Lit, founder of the Sunrise radio channel (probably the Network’s biggest competitor) who claimed in the Guardian that the station was ‘poorly managed’ and most listeners ‘wouldn’t give a toss’ if it was taken off air.

But the Asian Network at BBC is not really about Asian music or news. It is about Asians being a prominent part of the huge gigantic BBC Empire. For Asian journalism students in UK, the Asian Network was a beacon of hope. During my Masters at City University, I had applied for an internship at BBC, an extremely rigorous application procedure for a much competed and coveted position. Almost every single one of the thousands of journalism students in UK applies for an internship at BBC and the ones that make it are a miniscule percentage. So you can imagine how thrilled I was to get one with the Asian Network at Birmingham. I had to turn it down as I was already in employment then but it was definitely one of my proudest moments as a student.

The Asian Network situated at the Mailbox in Birmingham, is nothing compared to the BBC HQ at White City, London in terms of size but it’s always buzzing with activity and enthusiasm. Silver Street, the first radio soap opera aimed at the British South Asians was a huge craze six years ago when I visited the studios and met some voices. Apparently, it’s still a craze, just like Sonia Deol’s show.

The Asian network wasn’t like any Asian media organization; there was an aura of professionalism and perfection subscribing much to BBC’s ethos. Yet it was somehow desi and that’s what I will always remember about it.

This debate on Asian Network’s closure, to me, is not about rankings or balancing financial accounts, it’s about losing the ‘only’ thing that was desi in the BBC.