Nation Topics - India | The Nation

The article offers a discussion about world hunger and wealth distribution. It is argued that calls for the end of hunger fail to challenge the systems that prevent solutions. Hunger has grown 43 percent in five years in the United States. More hungry people live in India than in all of sub-Saharan Africa. Hunger is caused by an economic system that is driven by the rule: highest return to existing wealth. Because of this system, economic inequality is worsening in most of the world.

Comments on the resurgence of Christian fundamentalism in America. View that Christian fundamentalism heralds the end of the American empire and the rise of China and India because it is a road to nowhere that insists on fidelity to truths that are not true; Belief that fundamentalism schools the downwardly mobile working class to make the best of their lots and reduces the number of potential intellectuals by confusing minds with creationism.

Presents the authors view on the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in light of its one year anniversary. Historical comparison between abuses at Abu Ghraib and British prisons in India during the nineteenth century; Use of prisoner humiliation in each case; Discussion of the marriage between incarceration and cultural theory; Analysis of the photographic evidence of abuse at Abu Ghraib; View that the anniversary of Abu Ghraib should serve as a reminder of what happens when the declared ends of a project are incommensurate with the means.

Presents the author's views on the work of New York Times columnist Keith Bradsher. Comments on Bradsher's work in late 2002 regarding N. Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh in India; Bradsher's report on Naidu's fluency in Telugu and analysis of Indian business; Discussion of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's work regarding India; Review of India's current economic situation; Criticism of Friedman's views on India and Indian affairs.

Reviews the book "The Hungry Tide," by Amitav Ghosh.

The article focuses on the presence and environmental impact of a Coca-Cola plant in India. On one side of the street was the Coca-Cola plant, among the company's largest in Asia, and on the other a shack filled with locals eager to impart the news that they were now, as of April 2, 2005, in Day 1,076 of their struggle against the plant. Coca-Cola came to India in 1993, looking for water and markets in a country where 170 million people have no access to drinking water, with shortages growing daily. Coca-Cola bought a property, built a plant, sank six bore wells and commenced operations in March 2000. Within six months the villagers saw the level of their water drop sharply, and the water they did draw was awful. When the plant was running at full tilt, eighty-five truckloads rolled out of the plant gates, all containing the town's prime asset, water, now enhanced in cash value by Coca-Cola's infusions of its syrups. The locals will not let the plant reopen, to the consternation of the present pro-Coke government, which has tried, unconstitutionally, to overrule the local council and hopes the courts will grease Coca-Cola's wheels.

Reports that the Indian Parliament passed a patent law that dealt with its generic drug industry. Use of India's generic HIV medicines to treat HIV-positive persons in developing countries; Importance of Indian producers such as Cipla for treating AIDS; Statement that the new patent law leans toward patent protection rather than public health; Impact of the law on drug prices; Report that a provision in the law protects new drugs from compulsory licensing.

Reviews three books on politics and India. "Bonfire of Creeds: The Essential Ashis Nandy," by Ashis Nandy; "The Savage Freud," by Ashis Nandy; "The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World," by Partha Chatterjee.

The article looks at nuclear nonproliferation policies as of October 2004. Nonproliferation--the global campaign to prevent the further spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons--must be applied in a nondiscriminatory fashion to be effective. But the United States President George W. Bush Administration has been using nonproliferation policy to demonize foreign governments it does not like and to manipulate U.S. public opinion. The most egregious example was the totally discredited claim that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was on the verge of manufacturing nuclear weapons--a claim used to manufacture support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Another example is the charge, made in 2002 by John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for nonproliferation, that Cuba had an offensive biological-warfare program. It is against this backdrop of highly politicized nonproliferation policies that we must judge U.S. moves regarding Iran, India and the two Koreas. The crisis over Iran's nuclear activities has been gaining steam since 2003, when the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran had undertaken a previously undisclosed effort to "enrich" natural uranium--that is, increase the proportion of the fissionable U-235 isotope in its total content. The perception that the United States and its allies often engage in discriminatory nonproliferation practices is given added credibility by disclosures concerning South Korea and India.

The article focuses on opposition to the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Missouri Governor Bob Holden learned how volatile globalization issues have become when his Democratic primary challenger, Claire McCaskill, started banging away on him for offshoring the state's call center for food stamp and welfare recipients to India. The Missouri race provided the latest indication that the debate over trade and economic globalization issues is shifting to the states, as are debates on many issues once thought to be the exclusive province of federal officials. While Congress remains the primary battleground in fights over free-trade agreements and tax policies that benefit the "Benedict Arnold" corporations that John Kerry condemned for transferring jobs to countries with low wages and lax environmental regulations, state officials are often the first to feel the heat when factories close and service jobs are outsourced. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack have emerged as key players in a revolt against federal trade policies that would deny state and local governments the authority to give preferences in contract awards to firms that create jobs where the tax dollars that pay for those contracts are collected. In an effort to reassert federal authority, the Administration's pointman on trade issues, Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, last year asked governors to make a "voluntary" commitment binding their states to comply with the government purchasing provisions of all new trade agreements, including the pending Central American Free Trade Agreement.