With all the talk of outsourcing in this country, it is easy to forget that the developing countries taking our jobs have their own problems.
6 MILLION "slum-dwellers"? India's masses may represent a big market but they are also in the way of the market infrastructure like roads and stores.
In India, the Path To Growth Hits Roadblock: Slums
Huge Squatter Settlements Hem In Development Sites;
A Potent Political Force Mrs. Pawar's Runway View
March 17, 2006
MUMBAI – When Pushpa Ramesh Pawar moved to the teeming Vakola Pipeline slum on the edge of Mumbai's airport in 1989, she spent most of her time fighting off snakes, insects and disease in a makeshift plastic tent.
Today, her struggle to avoid eviction from her illegal dwelling represents one of the central challenges facing India's booming economy: How does the world's biggest democracy bulldoze the homes of voters who are squatting squarely in the way of progress?
The standoff highlights the tension between India's go-go growth and the hundreds of millions of citizens on the margins who feel left behind. They have the power to derail the best-laid plans of investors and the government with votes, protests and the courts. India desperately needs to fix its archaic infrastructure -- potholed roads, rundown airports and decrepit power plants -- if it wants to seriously compete with China for investment. Yet getting it done often runs counter to the interests of those just beginning to share in the new prosperity.
In China, the other billion-person economy struggling to square rapid growth with colossal infrastructure needs, illegal squatters like Mrs. Pawar are dealt with decisively and unceremoniously. One day they are there; the next they are not. Democratic India is a different story.
In Mumbai, the city formerly known as Bombay, the paupers have real political clout. Slum-dwellers constitute half of Mumbai's 12 million citizens, and they are faithful voters. That makes them an important bloc for local politicians, most of whom promise to fight efforts to relocate them.
Earlier this year we had the whole bruhaha about the foreign ownership of shipping ports. Interesting to see that the Chinese dont like the idea of foreign ownership any more than we do.
Amid Tension With U.S., China Faces Protectionist Surge at Home
March 31, 2006
Amid one of the longest and fastest growth streaks of any modern economy, China is wrestling with concerns from a rising wealth gap to corruption to environmental damage. But the latest uproar has turned on foreigners, targeting the many outside investors that have piled into China and prospered -- even while fueling much of the country's growth.
"Since last year, foreign companies have been fiercely buying up Chinese companies, including some core companies," said Li Shuguang, a vice dean at the Chinese University of Politics and Law in Beijing. "Foreign capital is so strong, a lot of Chinese companies have just collapsed."
The debate parallels the resurgence of protectionist sentiment in the U.S., which has been driven in part by concerns over China's clout. Last year, China's state-owned Cnooc Corp. abandoned a bid for U.S.-based Unocal Corp. amid a political outcry. More recently, U.S. policy makers have complained that China is refusing to allow its currency, the yuan, to appreciate quickly enough, fueling a flood of cheap Chinese exports and aggravating a trade imbalance.
